State Growers Estimate Heavy Losses to Crops and Farmland : Storm: Salinas Valley appears to have suffered the most flood damage. But retail food prices are not expected to rise much.

High winds and pounding rains during the weekend caused heavy damage to California’s already-soaked crops, particularly in the central part of the state and in San Diego and Ventura counties, farm experts said Sunday.

The worst hit apparently have been farmers around Salinas who have already lost millions of dollars worth of crops and likely much more in damage to their land under the heaviest flooding in decades.

“There’s water extending clear across the Salinas Valley. . . . There’s going to be billions of dollars of crop loss, land damage and damage to homes on the land,” predicted Bill Barker, manager of the Monterey County Farm Bureau.

“It’s devastating,” Barker added, alluding to the damage from the flooded Salinas River, which he said peaked early Sunday morning at four feet higher than the last big flood, in 1969.

Barker, who was cut off by flood waters Sunday at his ranch 16 miles from Salinas, said it was too early to add up the damage, but he noted that strawberries, broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, artichokes and asparagus had all been hard hit.

Teresa Thorne, spokeswoman for the California Strawberry Commission, said that 600 to 700 acres of strawberry fields have been inundated in the Watsonville-Salinas area, which could cause losses of as much as $5.6 million. Ventura and Santa Maria strawberry farms have also been hard it, she said.

“From the growers’ perspective, this is lousy,” Thorne said, “but from the consumers’ standpoint, they will still have fruit in the spring,” though it is likely to be slightly higher in price.

Few agricultural experts expect the rains to have a dramatic impact on retail food prices. The losses so far have been too sporadic to cause substantial shortages in any one crop, they said.

Fruit trees were toppled statewide in the high winds, but particularly in Northern California. “There is tree loss up and down the Sacramento Valley,” reported state Farm Bureau spokesman Bob Krauter on Sunday. “One grower I know lost 2,000 almond trees alone.”

At Conroy Farms Inc., which grows strawberries on about 200 acres at three fields in western Ventura County, workers were scrambling to harvest as many undamaged berries as they could find.

Farm officials were unable to provide precise estimates of crop damages, but said that it could equal or surpass the $27 million in losses sustained from January’s devastating floods.

Grower Mike Conroy said that he might lose as much as 60% of his strawberry crop. “Two weeks ago, I would have said if we had no further rains, the ranches all looked good and had the potential for a strong year,” he said. Elsewhere in Southern California, San Diego commercial flower farmers had expensive plants washed away from hillside farms. An added burden to the flower farmers is likely to be the fungus rot that usually accompanies prolonged soggy weather.

“It’s been pretty tough out here,” said Glen Fowler, who with his wife, Judy, runs Tenaja Farm, in Fallbrook. “We lost over 20,000 perennials, and they would have lasted 15 years. . . . We’ll lose probably 50% of our harvest,” said Fowler, whose mountain-slope farm has received 36 inches of rain so far this season.

Meanwhile, produce shippers say they don’t expect immediate problems getting trucks routed around the break in Interstate 5 where a bridge collapsed Friday night near Coalinga and southwest of Fresno.

Few California crops are being harvested at the moment, but shippers are worried that trucks could jam the alternate routes, such as Highway 99, in early April as perishable fruits and vegetables are brought to market.

“This is the big thing--the congestion they’ll encounter on 99,” said Bill Russell, managing director of the California Institute on Public Transportation. “That will mean delays and that will cost more money.”

Times correspondent Jeff McDonald in Ventura County contributed to this story.

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