Shriveling Livelihood : Uncertain Weather and Determined Builders Worry Strawberry Farmers

Migrant workers stoop over row after row of bushy plants dotted with white flowers, plucking off ripe strawberries gingerly to avoid bruising them. They fill their baskets and take the fruit to trucks parked in the midst of the 20 acres leased by Kei and Joann Higa in Glendora.

Joann Higa surveyed the acreage on a recent moist, cloudy morning and sighed. She and her husband, along with her brother-in-law, Eddie Higa, have farmed strawberries for most of their lives.

But this year, half the 40-acre parcel they normally lease at Lone Hill Avenue and Gladstone Street lies fallow. The property’s owner has redoubled his efforts to sell the land, and last year told the Higas they could not plant their crop. A third parcel they farmed for years just up the street is earmarked for the development of car dealerships.

“I don’t know what we will do from one year to the next,” Joann Higa said. “It’s hard, because you have to order all the supplies ahead of time. We don’t know if we’ll be able to plant again this fall.”

The San Gabriel Valley’s strawberry growers are a dying breed, farming fewer than 175 of the 2,000 acres still devoted to agriculture, according to Jeff Humphreys, Los Angeles County agricultural inspector. Before the 1950s, between 30,000 and 40,000 acres from Pasadena to Claremont were planted, most of them, citrus groves and small-farm crops.

Although housing developments have swallowed up most of the valley’s fields over the last 40 years, a few patches of farmland remain, tilled mostly by holdouts who have had farming in their blood for generations.

At least 10 strawberry farms have survived in the San Gabriel Valley, most of them selling their bounty at roadside stands each spring and to wholesale fruit shippers, Humphreys said.

The stands attract loyal customers each year, and the growers have little overhead or advertising costs. “Very often the roadside stands bail the farmers out financially,” he said.

“One grower left a 200-acre farm in Watsonville because he was going broke,” Humphreys recalled. “He said he was making more money on an acre and a half here, selling to suburbanites, than he did on the big farm up north.”

But the uncertainties of weather and the inevitability of development makes life tough for most suburban growers.

Isidro Camacho, 59, of Ontario can only shrug when asked how long he will keep growing strawberries on two parcels in La Puente and one in Chino.

“I know for sure I will finish this year, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to get the land. I lease from year to year, and there’s pressure on the owners to sell,” Camacho said, as he manned his strawberry stand at Azusa Avenue and Anaheim-Puente Road.

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He worked on an Ontario strawberry farm for 36 years before he quit in 1980 and started farming his own two-acre parcel. Since then he has expanded to about 30 acres. He and his wife, Bertha, and their three daughters work year-round, supervising the picking and selling from mid-January to early July, tilling the soil in August, fumigating in September and planting in October.

They set up their stands as early in the year as possible. Then in late spring, when the weather warms up in Northern California and harvesting begins there, local prices take a nose dive, and valley growers begin selling to frozen-strawberry processors.

This year, with its torrents of rain during the picking season, has been terrible for strawberry growers. Warm, dry weather is ideal for coaxing huge, sweet berries out of the ground, Joann Higa said.

“If it gets hot too early, then they rot. If it rains and the vines don’t have time to dry out, the berries get soft and bruised, and they rot,” she said. The waterlogged berries are sold as seconds, fetching far less than the first-class berries that can be sold retail.

Rene Borja of Montebello has grown strawberries on 2 1/2 acres at Cal Poly Pomona for the past three years as part of a student project, said Dan Hostetler, chairman of the university’s horticulture, plant and soil sciences program. Borja has been extremely successful in the past, selling his berries at the retail store on campus and at the San Dimas Farmer’s Market. But this year his first berries rotted, and a second crop did not appear until early March.

If more rain comes or the weather gets very warm this month and the berries ripen while they are still small, Hostetler said, Borja could lose 4,000 trays of fruit.

“We’re holding our breath,” Hostetler said. “Another inch and a half of rain and the whole crop will rot very, very quickly.”

Strawberry Farms in the Valley

Roadside strawberry stands have been open irregularly this season because this spring’s rains damaged crops. Here are the locations of some of the remaining strawberry farms in the San Gabriel Valley:

Lone Hill Avenue and Gladstone Street, Glendora

Azusa Avenue and Anaheim-Puente Road, La Puente

Valley Boulevard and Proctor Avenue, La Puente

Arrow Highway between Sunflower and Valley Center avenues, Glendora

Towne Avenue and Baseline Road, Claremont

Ramona Boulevard at the San Gabriel River (605) Freeway, El Monte

Amar Road east of Hacienda Boulevard, La Puente

Lemon Avenue north of Valley Boulevard, Walnut

Cal Poly Pomona, Building 28; stop at campus information booth for directions. Hours are 3 to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Citrus fruits, avocados, seasonal vegetables, eggs and sometimes meat are also sold.

Source: Los Angeles County Department of Agriculture