THE CALIFORNIA DELUGE : A Harvest of Higher Prices Looms : Agriculture: Super Bowl fans may have to skip the guacamole: Many crops have been destroyed by flooding.

Grocery shoppers will find tight supplies of avocados, strawberries, broccoli and navel oranges in coming weeks--and probably pay higher prices for them--because heavy rains and high winds continue to hamper harvests in many of California’s key agricultural areas, farmers said Tuesday.

Perhaps hardest hit have been growers of avocados in Southern California. High winds have knocked some of the thick-skinned fruit to the ground, and rain and mire have kept harvesters out of the fields. Shipments have been slashed by 75% on the verge of the industry’s most momentous day--Super Bowl Sunday on Jan. 29--indicating that many football fans might have to settle for salsa and bean dip instead of guacamole.

“We’ve had a crew ready to come in for 10 days,” said Arlene Doty, whose family farms avocados and lemons on their Ellwood Ranch in Goleta, west of Santa Barbara. “Hopefully, the fruit’s still on the trees.”

The foul weather in California, the nation’s leading producer of fruits and vegetables, follows ruinous deluges in Florida and Texas, two other top suppliers. California’s agricultural market is worth $20 billion.

In Sonoma County, the weekend’s torrential rains spelled disaster for farmer John Balletto, who lost 200 acres of specialty salad greens intended for restaurants--at a cost of nearly $300,000. He said he intends to replant as soon as the weather clears.

Strawberry fields in the Oxnard area of Ventura County have also suffered damage. Anxious almond growers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys fretted over the possibility that additional wind and rain could topple their shallowly rooted trees.

Winds thinned the southern San Joaquin Valley’s navel orange crop and rains slowed the harvesting, but this particular cloud will have a silver lining: The longer the oranges stay on the trees, the larger they will be.

Elsewhere, in the usually arid region encompassing Imperial County and Yuma, Ariz., double teams of tractors were enlisted to pull harvesting equipment through soggy fields as farmers attempted to harvest broccoli, cauliflower, celery and leaf lettuces before further storms moved inland. Scattered power outages and mudslides have also impeded farmers’ efforts.

Supplies, already reduced by earlier rains and cool weather, could remain tight because of the harvest delays, said Bob Krauter, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau in Sacramento. Should fields stay saturated, some crops will also run the risk of fungal infestation.

With harvesting so difficult, “you can expect a jump in prices,” said Bill Gillette, acting agricultural commissioner for Santa Barbara County.

The weather has also postponed the planting of spring crops, mainly melons, said Steve Birdsall, agricultural commissioner of Imperial County.

Farmers stagger the planting of such crops beginning in mid-December, and “if they can’t plant during a certain period . . . you will have some higher prices, maybe starting in late May,” Birdsall said. But by June, he added, delayed crops will overlap with fruit planted on the regular schedule, producing a glut that should lead to lower prices.

The situation for grape growers and vintners in Napa and Sonoma counties, home of the state’s most prestigious wineries, improved markedly Tuesday thanks to a break in the foul weather that in some spots had dumped as much as 16 inches of rain in three days.

Over the weekend, growers had watched helplessly as heavy rains and swollen rivers swamped vineyards under as much as five feet of water. But a respite allowed flood waters to subside Tuesday before showers resumed at midday.

By the accounts of many veterans of severe flooding in 1955 and ‘86, the dormant vines will suffer little if any long-term damage, although many fields will have to be cleared of trees and brush that washed down from saturated hillsides.

“It’s more of an annoyance,” said Bruce Cakebread, winemaker at Cakebread Cellars in Rutherford. “We want to start construction of a new barrel room for the ’95 harvest, but we’re looking at one to two months delay.”

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Times staff writer Dan Berger in Santa Rosa and researcher Norma Kaufman in San Francisco contributed to this report.

* BUSINESS IMPACT

Commerce helped and harmed by storm. D3