Swollen Prices : Crop damage caused by recent rains will keep consumer costs high. The good news is that avocados will be cheaper because of a surplus.

After surveying rain-battered fields, local celery and strawberry growers have rinsed off their muddy boots, tallied losses and delivered the verdict: Crop damage is significant enough to inflate consumer prices well into 1993. But there’s good news, too. Avocados are being sold at bargain-basement prices because a bumper crop is flooding the market, driving wholesale returns downward.

So even with substantial damage or losses, growers are not presenting a doomsday scenario for themselves or consumers--there are always subsequent harvests to help play catch-up.

Still, farmers say that the region’s celery production does account for a huge portion of the nation’s market share at this time of year. Hence, any losses here in Ventura County mean higher consumer prices everywhere. By contrast, the local early-crop strawberries account for only a small percentage of a market that won’t heat up until later in the year. Any losses now undercut supply, making demand more heated.

Chief Deputy Agricultural Commissioner David Buettner said broccoli and lettuce crops also suffered some damage, but supplies are expected to return to normal before long.

“It’s the strawberries that were the hardest hit,” Buettner said. “There were some significant losses for individual farmers.” Buettner said his office is not tallying a dollar amount, but that some growers lost anywhere from 30% to 95% of their early harvests.

Strawberries are especially vulnerable to rain. Tender fruit is bruised by pelting raindrops, and when the fields are too drenched for workers to enter, fruit becomes overripe and splits. The result: berries fit only for sale to the processing industry, leaving the fresh market without fruit. Soon after the skies calmed, however, growers were able to return to the fresh market.

“We’re fighting some quality problems, but production is picking up,” said Richard Jones, executive vice president of Bob Jones Ranch Inc. in Oxnard. He said short supplies will continue as fruit from other growing regions matures. “Right now, there just is not much volume,” Jones said.

Oxnard’s strawberry season begins to peak in late spring. But blossom damage is expected to cut subsequent production, Buettner said. “It’s a long season,” Jones said. “We’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.”

Celery prices are expected to remain inflated until late spring or early summer, said Jeff Foster, a salesman with Boskovich Farms in Oxnard.

Standing water--a major problem for celery--can spawn viruses, cause rotting, soften stalks and make harvesting more difficult, growers say. On top of that, the local celery crop even suffered some frost damage. The blemish-ridden outer stalks will be “stripped back,” Foster said. “They have to be removed to make the product more attractive to the consumer.”

But stripped down, lesser-quality celery actually means higher prices. Why? Because farmers sell their product in varying carton sizes. “Stripping back the outer stalks creates a smaller plant,” Foster explained. “It takes more to fill the carton and lowers the yield per acre, driving prices up a little for the consumer.”

But that’s not the only reason growers predict inflated consumer prices through at least early spring. Besides the Oxnard area, the country’s other leading celery producer is Florida, which has experienced hefty crop damage due to inclement weather. Retail prices will remain above normal, Foster said, until the Salinas and Santa Maria districts begin their sizable harvests.

The rains also have thrown off the scheduled planting of row crops, a fact that will affect pricing, said Jan DeLyser, executive vice president of the Fresh Produce Council, an industry trade organization. Simply, muddied fields can’t be prepared well, and growers must wait for them to dry out and firm up. “As things gradually return to normal,” she explained, “you could see slight price increases again 60 to 90 days down the road because planting was delayed.”

But the rains only briefly halted this season’s bountiful avocado harvest. “The whole season is going to be a low-priced year” for avocados, said Dave Schwabauer, part owner of Leavens Ranches in Ventura. “A good year for the consumer; conversely, hard for the growers.”