Tough Row to Hoe : Promising Field Leaves Partners With Bumper Crop of Trouble

When his truck jounces along the rough road past Conejo Ranch, farmer Jim Roberts sees a tidy green field of baby vegetables--the same kind of wispy, hopeful bloom that cloaked the field one year ago.

But although the Ventura County field looks just as it did last fall, Roberts views it differently. Where he once saw rich dirt and ripe potential, he now sees pain, frustration and anger.

It’s been that kind of year.

Since they planted the first seeds during Thanksgiving week of 1993, Roberts and partners Craig Underwood and Minos Athanassiadis have had to deal with an astounding pileup of troubles on their 60-acre field just outside Camarillo.

They have skirmished with neighbors irate about a giant, stinking compost heap on a corner of their property. They have battled biologists who declared one-third of their field a federally protected wetland.

They have watched part of a fantastic corn crop wither in the field when they could not unload the ears at decent prices. And they have struggled to find markets in a ruthless industry dominated by a few agribusiness giants.

All this is on top of the standard farming foes of fickle weather, faltering markets and ferocious pests.

Last fall, they cooed and clucked over Conejo Ranch as though it were a newborn; this year, they anguish and fret over the field as though it were a juvenile delinquent. A thieving delinquent at that: The field lost $50,000 in its first year.

The crush of woes, Roberts mused, “changes the way you look at the land.”

In the year’s worst blow, the Environmental Protection Agency recently determined that the farmers destroyed 23 acres of valuable wetland when they clear-cut, drained and leveled Conejo Ranch to prepare it for planting.

To atone, the partners must either restore the field to its natural state or enhance a torn-up wetland elsewhere in the county. They will probably negotiate a deal with the EPA over the next several months.

The tab could swing from less than $100,000 to more than $2 million, depending on the project, according to wetland consultants.

Yet all three partners fiercely believe they will survive. They figure they will do just fine if they keep doing what they have been doing. And that includes farming Conejo Ranch, carrying it along from season to season, struggling through the bad times and waiting for the good.

As Roberts explained, “That’s farming.”

Though Conejo Ranch is the only property they own, the partners rent 22 other fields in Ventura County, so they have backup sources of cash. They now grow 100 different vegetables, from purple radishes to yellow potatoes to black-eyed beans, so they can keep revenue flowing even if a few crops fail. They also have stoic, steady personalities on their side, helping them endure.

“These guys all have such stellar characters,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. Praising the partners’ buoyancy through turbulence, he added: “Can you imagine if this happened to someone who was just mediocre?”

What happens, of course, is that many farmers fail--mediocre or not.

Fewer Farms

The most recent U.S. census disclosed that the number of farms in the United States has dropped below 2 million for the first time since the Civil War.

Meanwhile, about 2 million acres of agricultural land vanish each year, the rich soil banished under the concrete crust of development. Ventura County alone lost about 900 acres a year between 1984 and 1990, according to state statistics.

Since the Underwood Ranches partners first tilled Conejo Ranch just one year ago, they have watched the wood-and-steel skeletons of two factory outlet malls and a mega-plex movie theater sprout on the prime farmland of the Oxnard Plain. And developers have proposed building everything from affordable homes to an exotic-animal zoo in the agricultural greenbelts that stretch between local cities.

“The number of people who are making a living from farming is decreasing,” said Eric Vink of the American Farmland Trust, a national conservation group.

In launching Conejo Ranch, the partners were aware of the gamble. They were aware, and they were proud: proud of saving a parcel from development, proud of coaxing an abandoned lot back into food production.

Their 60-acre field, tucked between scrub-spotted hills and a plant-lined creek, had lain vacant for a decade before the partners bought it in the spring of 1993. During that long fallow spell, the land had sprouted billowing willows and scrubby underbrush. The tangled vegetation had beckoned quail, coyote, even a family of mountain lions.

Viewing the weedy lot as an eyesore, the farmers eagerly ripped out the helter-skelter growth and laid down neat furrows, an elaborate drainage system, shiny irrigation pipes.

“To us,” Underwood said, “it seemed like we were doing a really good thing.”

Federal officials, however, took a different view.

After a six-month probe that wrapped up in late October, biologists from the Environmental Protection Agency determined that the farmers had destroyed a unique riparian ecosystem that linked the Santa Monica Mountains and Conejo Creek.

“It provided very, very diverse habitat--food and shelter for all sorts of animals and birds,” EPA biologist Aaron Setran said.

Because the ranchers did not know they were tampering with a wetland when they sent in their tractors, Setran said, the EPA will not press criminal charges. But the government could still extract a crushing toll by demanding that the farmers replace the “values” of the destroyed habitat.

“Agriculture is subjected to lots of risks . . . but it’s legislative and regulatory action that can put you out of business the fastest,” said Laird, of the county Farm Bureau. “All the natural disasters we face pale before what state and federal regulators can do.”

Long before they tally a final tab, the farmers already consider the EPA’s verdict oppressive. Just as much as the expense, they resent the implication.

“I consider myself an environmentalist,” Roberts said. “That’s why I do what I do--to be outside, with nature. This just doesn’t sit right.”

Even local Sierra Club leader Cassandra Auerbach, a stern environmentalist, praised the partners for “trying to be responsible.” While she mourns the destruction of 23 acres of wetland, Auerbach also pities the partners. “It’s very sad,” she said.

The farmers reject such pity.

They bristle at the concerned calls from friends and relatives. They squirm when neighbors troop into their produce stand and gather up bushels of veggies, buying way more than they could eat as a none-too-subtle form of charity.

“We don’t want anyone feeling sorry for us,” Underwood said.

“I’m certain we’ll get over this,” Athanassiadis added.

Profits, Losses

Getting over it means first bringing Conejo Ranch back into the black.

The field’s inaugural crop of mixed gourmet greens, harvested last winter, sold crisply and racked up a $50,000 profit.

The next crop, however, flopped. Conejo Ranch’s summer corn peaked at the wrong time--when the market was sagging. Customers slid out of their verbal commitments to buy the corn, and sales tumbled. The crop lost $100,000.

Just as the corn crisis hit, the EPA cranked up its wetland investigation. Then, neighbors raised a stink about the huge compost heap rotting away on Conejo Ranch’s southeastern corner.

As one last torment, the Mediterranean fruit fly invaded Ventura County, landing in a Camarillo orchard just miles from Conejo Ranch. For a while, the farmers feared the Medfly infestation would trigger a boycott of Ventura County produce. Ultimately, the threat fizzled. But the waiting made for a tense few weeks.

Bunched around a Formica table in their office kitchen one recent afternoon, the three partners each sought to come up with an adjective to describe this most chaotic year.

Athanassiadis called it “challenging.” Tipping back his chair and grinning, Roberts offered up “tiring.” Finally, Underwood selected “enlightening”--only a slight trace of irony in his voice.

“We thought we were doing an exceptional thing on Conejo Ranch,” Underwood explained. “Nothing, it seemed, could have gone better. Then we had the EPA come down on us, compounded by the compost heap, the Medfly thing. . . .

“Sometimes you’re not rewarded for doing things right,” he said.

But according to the EPA, the farmers did not do things right.

Before buying Conejo Ranch, they should have consulted with environmental experts, who might have warned them that the moist field, with its clusters of cattails and rushes, could fall under federal jurisdiction.

As Bart Doyle, a Los Angeles wetland attorney, explained: “In California, you should always assume some part of your land is regulated, no matter what you want to do with it.”

The Conejo Ranch partners, however, did not assume they would need federal permission to start a farm. And the developers who sold them the parcel did not disclose any constraints on the 60-acre field, Underwood said.

“They really didn’t know it was a wetland,” EPA biologist Setran agreed. “They’re good guys caught in a bad place. But we have to look after the law.”

Setran launched his investigation into Conejo Ranch last winter, after reading about the farm’s swampy origins in The Times. By studying soil samples and examining aerial photos of the field before and after the partners purchased it, Setran determined that the farming operation had destroyed 23 acres of wetland, a violation of the federal Clean Water Act.

Ironically, the law would have allowed the farmers to do anything they wanted to on Conejo Ranch if they had first drained the water and let the field dry up, according to several environmental attorneys.

Federal law prohibits only the “discharge” of material into a wetland. That covers any redistribution of soil in a wetland--from digging a ditch to churning up earth with a bulldozer.

But the law does not ban other activities that would clearly devastate a wetland: chopping down plants by hand, burning vegetation, pumping out water. Even plowing is considered acceptable. As long as no soil is shifted, landowners can legally destroy a wetland--and then, once the parcel is dry, build or farm with impunity, lawyers said.

“Frankly, to this day you can do all sorts of things in wetlands,” San Francisco attorney David Ivester said.

Challenge Considered

The Conejo Ranch farmers could still challenge the EPA’s decision. They are tempted. Yet the thought of going up against a federal agency scares them.

Underwood expects to spend up to $10,000 on preliminary consulting studies just to lay out his options--and he knows an appeal would cost much, much more. “(EPA officials) make it abundantly clear that they have unlimited resources,” he said in frustration. “They’re saying, basically, ‘We can outspend you until you give in.’ ”

Despite his resources, EPA biologist Setran does hope to avoid a court brawl. So, in a low-key call from his San Francisco office this fall, he urged the partners to negotiate.

Generally, the EPA requires offenders to restore two acres of wetland for every one destroyed. The agency also may tack on another penalty for “temporal loss”--the number of years the wetland habitat was displaced. And the government usually insists that violators monitor any just restored wetland for at least five years.

But in this case, Setran said, the farmers could “make a big dent in their mitigation requirement” by simply planting willows and native shrubs along the border of Conejo Ranch. By creating a wetland corridor along the field’s southern strip, the partners could open up a path for animals seeking to cross into Conejo Creek.

A cheap fix, the corridor would restore the destroyed habitat’s most valuable feature without cutting into Conejo Ranch’s farming operation. “We could do it in a way that would barely affect any acreage at all,” Setran promised.

The hitch, however, is that the partners would be left with a federally protected wetland on their property for years to come. And for now, they have had more than enough of the government.

To boot the government off their ranch entirely, the partners would have to come up with an off-site wetland repair project that would satisfy the EPA.

They could pull the voracious, bamboolike arundo plants from local arroyos, for example, and replace them with native willows. They could pump water into a onetime pond drained by some previous scofflaw. Or, they could freshen up the gentle lagoon at Ormond Beach, home to snowy plovers, brown pelicans and other rare birds.

An acceptable mitigation project “could take as little as turning on a tap” and filling a dried-up pond, wetland consultant Glenn Lukos of Laguna Hills said. At the other extreme, a massive job, complete with grading and excavating, could cost $40,000 to $60,000 an acre, he said.

The EPA’s open-ended instructions leave the farmers free to scout the cheapest way to pay their dues.

Whatever option they choose, they will never be able to compensate Southern California for the loss of the Conejo Ranch wetland, scientists said--unless they tear up their crops, plant native species and let the field go wild for decades.

“There was a mosaic to that wetland . . . and you’ll never, ever replace that,” Setran said. “It was unique unto itself.”

Rich and fertile, the Conejo Ranch habitat was also relatively new when the farmers moved in. Before the weeds took root in the early 1980s, the field had been worked as farmland for more than a century, trodden by cattle and tilled by man.

In planting Conejo Ranch, the partners fancied they were reinvigorating the land by reviving its agricultural roots. That respect for farming tradition, however, clashed with the environmentalists’ respect for nature, which had reclaimed the land with flair in just a decade.

“The question is,” environmental consultant LeeAnne Hagmaire said, “whether food and fiber have more value than a recently created wetland.”

Hagmaire votes for baby carrots and Italian arugula above two-striped garter snakes and southwestern pond turtles. So does Conejo Ranch’s planting foreman, Natividad Zavala.

“By working here, we’re producing food for this world,” he said.

As his crew of harvesters crouched under a stormy November sky to pick carrots, Zavala added: “Look how many mouths you feed with this field. We have to do this to live. Of course, I don’t want the animals to die. But I don’t want myself to die, either.”

To environmentalists, however, such arguments are too facile. Wetlands, they note, do much more than shelter animals. They also purify water, filtering man-made contaminants through thick underbrush. And they absorb heavy rainfall, thereby saving downstream homes from flooding.

“These kinds of wetlands are so important on so many different levels,” said Carrie Phillips, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “When you’re talking about a region that’s lost over 90% of its wetlands, ecologically speaking, everything counts.”

While they don’t believe their field counts as a protected wetland, the Underwood Ranches partners are eager to resolve their dispute with the EPA quickly.

Although pacifying the EPA could cost a bundle, Underwood insists: “We will not allow that piece of property to threaten the rest of our farming operation.”

To stay solvent, the partners must make regular payments on their $420,000 bank loan, taken out to purchase Conejo Ranch in the spring of 1993. They cannot sell the land to raise cash, not with a wetland designation dooming future development.

So that leaves farming.

Right now, the field is nourishing its third crop of the year: baby carrots, with a sprinkling of red, gold and candy beets tossed in as well.

Most of the carrots will be sheared of their fluffy tops and stacked in plastic bags bearing Underwood Ranches’ “Sweet Petite” label. About one-third will be sold to markets and restaurants in loose bunches, specks of dirt serving as proof of freshness.

To breed shapely, smooth-skinned carrots, the partners experiment with dozens of different seeds each year. Of the 70 varieties tested last season, only one is still up for consideration--and before it wins approval, it must survive further trials. Not only must the carrot look good, but it must also whisk through the processing machine speedily, without snagging in the gears.

“This product line is very demanding,” Roberts said. “Nothing is ever right 100%--we just try to keep improving what’s there.”

Counting on brisk holiday sales, the partners are hoping their carrot crop will swing Conejo Ranch back into the money, after the $100,000 loss from summer corn wiped out the $50,000 profit from last winter’s greens.

Earlier in the season, Underwood was confident the crop would prove a winner: “The carrots look excellent,” he declared.

But since then, the crop has run into a few snags. An early cold snap slowed carrot growth and delayed the second round of harvesting. The feared, armor-clad pests known as nematodes invaded, burrowing into plant roots and deforming a patch of baby carrots. Roberts is also warily watching for the dangerous phythium fungus, which blotches the carrots with black spots.

Still, Underwood feels comfortable forecasting a decent return for his company at year’s end. The 22 rented fields bailed out Conejo Ranch’s loss on the corn crop. And the financial fallout from the EPA probe will wait until 1995.

“It’s been a reasonable year,” Underwood said.

“But not a knock-down-the-doors-and-go-to-Las Vegas year,” Roberts broke in.

For enduring 12 months of seemingly endless disasters, the three partners will each earn about $70,000. Not a fortune, certainly. But at least they will not have to sacrifice their paychecks to keep the farm running this year.

As Roberts concluded: “There will be a Christmas.”

“A Christmas,” Underwood amended, “but no bonus.”

CONEJO RANCH: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Asked to sum up the year in three adjectives, the Conejo Ranch partners selected “challenging,” “tiring” and “enlightening.” They could have added frustrating, trying and tense as well. But despite some demoralizing setbacks, all three expressed confidence in Conejo Ranch and in their business. “We’re used to the ups and downs of farming,” Craig Underwood said.

Fall 1993

After clearing Conejo Ranch and preparing the rich soil, the partners plant gourmet greens--Japanese mizuna, Chinese tatsoi and Italian arugula. They also toss in some radishes, bok choy and turnips. Sprinkling up to 2 million seeds in a single acre, they plant the field in strips. By seeding a new patch every week, they ensure a continual harvest throughout the winter.

Winter 1993

The greens are harvested, washed and tossed into Underwood Ranches’ bagged gourmet salad. Meanwhile, the partners seek new produce buyers. Most of their vegetables are rushed each evening to the Los Angeles Produce Market. From there, the produce travels through several warehouses before reaching markets and restaurants worldwide.

Spring 1994

Conejo Ranch receives its second crop of the year--sweet, bi-colored corn. The farmers also create a huge compost heap using shredded paper and organic waste from packinghouses. Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency launches an investigation into whether the partners destroyed a wetland while preparing for planting.

Winter 1994

The partners are not yet sure what they will plant this winter. Their decision will depend on the weather, the market, and the success of harvests gleaned from the 22 rented fields they farm elsewhere in Ventura County. Before they plant seeds of any type, they must plow the ground thoroughly to bury all traces of the potent herbicide they used this fall to protect the carrot crop from weeds.

Fall 1994

Corn sales pick up, and the farmers sell out all of their late-season harvest. But, EPA biologists conclude that the partners destroyed 23 acres of wetlands at Conejo Ranch. The EPA orders the farmers to restore part of the field to its natural state or to enhance an existing wetland elsewhere in the county. Meanwhile, the farmers plant a third crop: baby carrots.

Summer 1994

The partners suffer a series of setbacks. Neighbors complain that the compost heap stinks and demand its removal. The EPA intensifies the investigation into possible wetlands destruction. And the corn crop loses money. Unable to find markets for their bountiful crop, the farmers must leave several acres of corn unpicked.

Sources: Minos Athanassiadis and Jim Roberts, Underwood Ranches

Researched by STEPHANIE SIMON / Los Angeles Times