Flying High : Growers, Nursery Owners Rejoice at End of Medfly Quarantine

Tom Givvin heard the news about the end of the medfly quarantine Tuesday as he was driving to the Marina del Rey garden center he has owned for 17 years, and he could barely contain his excitement. No more stripped down fruit trees! No more inspectors! No more unhappy customers hoping to find oranges on his trees and instead finding only green leaves!

“I ran in and told our general manager, ‘Ruben! Ruben! They lifted the quarantine!’ ” Givvin said. “I was overwhelmed.”

Cindy Brewer of Long Beach did not hear that the state and federal governments Monday declared an end to the 2-year-old quarantine, but then again, she never really heard that the quarantine was in place. Or, she acknowledged, if she heard it, she was never quite sure it applied to her and her rows of backyard trees.

Certainly, Brewer said, she never hesitated to share the fruits of her spectacular garden, bringing bagfuls of grapefruits, lemons, oranges, pears and peaches to work and friends’ homes--a major no-no under the quarantine, which prohibited any movement of backyard fruit off the grower’s property.

When the signs on the freeways around the Los Angeles Basin come down, and drivers are no longer alerted to the quarantine zone the way they are notified of a stretch of adopted roadway, the average garden hobbyist may not notice a difference.

But the commercial growers, packers, sellers and shippers who either operate in or transport produce through Los Angeles County couldn’t be happier to be out from under the heavy set of restrictions that have governed their businesses on and off for 16 years.

No matter to them that the state has declared victory several times over the Mediterranean fruit fly--a burrowing pest that can devastate more than 250 crops. The produce professionals are happy to celebrate this newest emancipation for as long as it lasts.

Agriculture officials said Monday that their pronouncement came after not finding any medflies since 1994 in any of the thousands of traps they had placed over 1,500 square miles of the Los Angeles Basin.

John Gless, whose Gless Ranch grows citrus on about 4,000 acres in Riverside County, Kern County and the Coachella Valley, expressed relief at the lifting of the quarantine. Most important, he said, he looks forward to not having to jump through hoops to assuage the concerns of overseas customers, notably in Japan. “When they see us eradicate, it builds up their confidence, and that might mean some extra orders, which will mean more profit.”

Among the most gleeful players in the big citrus-exporting industry are the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which stand to benefit mightily from the lifting of the quarantine. To avoid the medfly zone, most citrus brokers have taken to shipping directly from Oakland or Ventura County’s Port Hueneme, said Ted Batkin, manager of the Visalia-based Citrus Research Board, which funds research for the citrus industry.

Al Fierstine, director of marketing for the Port of Los Angeles, said lifting the quarantine should send some of that business back.

“We do anticipate a return of market share,” Fierstine said. That, in turn, he said, will mean “jobs . . . and taxes for Los Angeles as opposed to Ventura County.”

All told, Batkin estimated that the medfly quarantine has cost the region “well into the tens or twenties of millions of dollars” in lost sales, costly precautionary measures and the added expenses of trucking fruit to packinghouses outside the zone.

As the quarantine wore on, the 400 growers of the Villa Park Orchards packing cooperative in Orange bought a second facility in Fillmore to pack fruit for shipment to Japan. Hauling Valencia oranges the extra miles to Fillmore cut substantially into the bottom line.

“We’ve been running all over creation,” said Butch Leichtfuss, president and general manager. “It’s been very costly.”

Despite the lifting of the quarantine, Villa Park plans to hang on to its Fillmore facility “forever,” Leichtfuss said. “If another disaster like this should happen,” he said, “we’ve got a place to go.”

Hudhail Alamir, 58, who has grown oranges, figs, strawberries and tomatoes at his Mar Vista home for 20 years, sheepishly said that although he obeyed the quarantine in the beginning, he gradually quit following the rules.

“I didn’t even know it was still in effect until I heard that it was lifted,” Alamir said. “I thought it had expired or something.”

But even during the time when he thought he was being law-abiding, Alamir said, he did not really understand the provisions, thinking only that he couldn’t take his fruit outside the quarantine zone. He never stopped taking fruit to friends in the area, he said.

Alamir said he was pleased nonetheless that the restrictions were over. Not only does it mean that his fruit is safe, he said, but he now has a new excuse for taking his friends oranges, rather than the more labor-intensive fresh-squeezed juice.

“I’ll tell them now that the quarantine is lifted, there is no reason for me to squeeze--they can have the whole oranges,” he said.