Easier PICKINGS

Doug Circle has been growing strawberries in Orange County for 20 years, but this year things will be different.

“We’re pretty darn excited about it,” said Circle, part-owner of Kirk Produce in Anaheim and Laguna Farms in Irvine. “We expect the biggest crop ever.”

The industry is producing a new variety, called Camarosa, that is bigger, firmer and longer-lasting than other strawberry strains. The Camarosa also has a longer growing season, which allowed local growers to start picking the season’s first berries early in December rather than in mid-January.

But more important, the new berry is coming at a time when the statewide industry, which supplies 80% of the nation’s strawberries, is confronted with major challenges.

Growers are still recovering from last spring’s cyclospora outbreaks, which were wrongly blamed on strawberries but still cost the industry $20 million. A few areas nationwide, especially Texas, are still a bit leery of the fruit.

Growers also are bracing for stronger union organizing activity this spring. The AFL-CIO has joined the United Farm Workers in the UFW’s attempt to unionize workers, and even some retailers like Ralphs supermarkets have sided with the workers’ cause.

In addition, competitive pressures and higher labor, land and water costs, particularly in Southern California, have put a squeeze on growers and shippers as they try to cut down on waste and ship better berries to market.

“We love a challenge, don’t we?” quipped Cindy Jewel, director of operations for the California Strawberry Commission, the industry’s promotion arm.

“We’ve never had a year like last year,” she said. “But it also got us much more prepared to deal with a crisis than ever before. The industry really pulled together.”

Growers decided, for instance, to trade in their individual quality control procedures for an industrywide uniform quality assurance program. “We feel we’re at the top end of the spectrum on quality,” said Oxnard grower Mike Conroy. In Orange County, shippers for the first time put together a berry tasting event last week in Irvine for buyers and retailers.

The industry’s effort is, in part, a final response to the cyclospora scare. But it’s also a response to higher standards demanded by consumers, regulators and growers themselves, said Kirk Larson, a pomologist--or fruit scientist--at UC Davis’ research fields in Irvine.

“The marketplace is becoming more sophisticated. It demands quality,” Larson said. “The pictures of strawberries [in advertising] 10 years ago are nothing like the pictures today. Today, the pictures show strawberries that are shiny, big and have nice, conical shapes. That’s what consumers want.”

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The Camarosa has become the dominant berry in Southern California fields, though growers took a few years to embrace it. In Orange County, for instance, the Camarosa was planted on only 247 acres in 1995 and on 965 acres--about 45% of the fields--last year.

This year, the strain is planted on nearly all of the more than 2,000 acres under cultivation in Orange County, where the strawberry is the county’s biggest food crop, accounting for $37.6 million in sales in 1995. In Ventura County, the Camarosa is planted on about 85% of the 5,400 acres of strawberry fields.

The two counties provide the state, as well as national and international markets, with early strawberries. The industry’s biggest growing district, the Watsonville-Salinas area, doesn’t start harvesting until spring.

Developed at UC Davis research fields in Irvine in 1988 particularly for the Southern California climate, the Camarosa was tested and released to farmers late in 1993 along with four other varieties. The others didn’t make the grade.

“It was more productive and they didn’t have to throw as much away,” said Larson, who works at the Irvine research center.

The new berry is generally larger and more consistent in its quality and taste.

Retailers have been asking for it specifically and are willing to pay a premium, Larson said. Field hands like the new berries because they’re bigger and easier to pick, he said, while growers like the fact that they aren’t easily damaged in transit.

Even with the heavier rains in January, he said, the Camarosa has stood up well. Though some ripe fruit was spoiled or lowered in quality by the rains, the unripened fruit was largely unscathed. And unlike the Chandler and other varieties, the Camarosa produces new fruit every few days.

“The plants are like machines; they keep pumping fruit out,” Larson said. Only a flood, he said, could severely damage the crop.

Ventura County growers had a little more rain than Orange County had, Conroy said, but the cooler air cut down on rot and other damage from rains. Despite the delays in picking, “the plants benefited from the rains,” he said. “This could be a record year.”

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The commission is hoping the new variety will repair some of the damage the industry suffered under last year’s cyclospora scare.

California strawberries initially were blamed for hundreds of cases of intestinal illness, caused by microscopic parasites. Retailers throughout the nation and in Canada pulled California strawberries from their shelves and cut down or eliminated orders.

But later, federal disease control experts traced the outbreaks to raspberries imported from Guatemala. The damage to the California industry, though, was done. Orange and Ventura counties weren’t hurt because the fresh fruit season was essentially over. The Watsonville-Salinas area took the brunt of the $20-million loss.

The state’s trade group, which mounted an unprecedented crisis-control effort, has spread the word and regained the confidence of most retailers, Jewel said. But some in the Boston, Houston and Toronto areas remain a little skeptical.

Texas, in particular, hasn’t absolved the California strawberry of all blame.

More than 100 Texans fell ill in five separate outbreaks, said Jeff Taylor, a staff epidemiologist with the Texas Health Department. The strawberry appears to be the only fruit to blame in one of those outbreaks, he said, even though the health club that served the fruit also had Guatemalan raspberries in the kitchen.

“So it’s unclear to us what role strawberries played,” Taylor said.

“Everybody hopes we’ve seen the last of the cyclospora scare,” said Bob Krauter, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation, “but we have to be prepared for the future.”

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What growers are preparing for is strong organizing activity from the United Farm Workers. “We’ve got to brace ourselves for it,” Conroy said.

The union, which won elections at three farms only to see growers plow the fields under or shut the farms down, is getting help as it prepares for the major part of the harvest in April and May in the Watsonville-Salinas area.

The AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor umbrella organization, has called the UFW’s effort one of labor’s most important organizing drives and has pledged its support. The UFW even persuaded some supermarket chains, including Ralphs, to announce their support publicly for the workers.

“We haven’t chosen to go to election with individual companies yet because of what happened before,” Jocelyn Sherman, a union spokeswoman, said about the growers who shut down business after workers were organized. “But we have a whole campaign going, communicating with workers who are there. We’ll intensify it when the season starts and the rest of the workers arrive.”

The UFW is targeting the huge district this year mainly because the majority of the industry’s 20,000 pickers work there. No organizing is planned this year for Southern California.

The UFW hopes that exposing alleged abuses--such as dirty drinking water and toilets, low pay, inadequate health insurance and widespread sexual harassment--will embarrass the industry into negotiating a contract.

But the growers assert that the union is exaggerating the abuses, misleading the public and is out of touch with the state’s 20,000 strawberry pickers.

The union’s national publicity campaign is a “waste of money,” said Gary Caloroso, a spokesman for the grower-backed Strawberry Workers & Farmers Alliance. “They should spend that money and effort to build a better relationship with the strawberry workers themselves.”

Caloroso contends that many strawberry workers earn “a living wage,” own their own homes and cars and have children in college. “Workers have clean drinking water and clean bathrooms in the fields,” he maintained.

Caloroso also charged that the union has engaged in “tremendous hypocrisy” by failing to pay its own organizers minimum wages and provide them with benefits. His group has even publicized a recent lawsuit accusing the union of sexual harassment. The UFW calls the suit “totally bogus.”

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Even without union problems, many of the smaller growers among the state’s 600 operators face tough economic times. Orange County growers, especially, are in fierce competition with Florida farmers to get the early and highest-priced fruit to market first. Florida produces about 10% of the nation’s crop.

“The Camarosa has allowed Southern California growers to remain competitive,” Larson said. “Without it, there would have been many growers who would have gone out of business.”

Orange County growers have had to plant earlier each year to match Florida growers, who have continued to push the harvesting date up.

But if they plant too early, growers here end up with a lower yield and lower-quality strawberries. The Camarosa, however, can handle early planting well and starts ripening at least a month earlier than other varieties.

There are economic forces, though, that even the new berry is helpless in combating. Orange County growers already are paying premium rents for their fields, and many are operating farms in Ventura County as well. They know that creeping suburbanization in Orange County will overtake them eventually.

“The slowdown in construction in the last 10 years has been a slowdown in lost acreage for us,” Circle said. “There’s no question about it: Farming’s an interim use of property here. It’s not the highest and best use of land for owners.”

Should the El Toro Airport become reality, plots of land under the flight path should be available to agriculture, said Matthew Kawamura, who with his brother, A.G. Kawamura, has farmed county land exclusively.

“The real estate market always will affect availability,” Kawamura said. “It’s a very difficult way to make a living. The farmer today operates month-to-month in Orange County. The prime ground for development also happens to be the best ground for farming.”

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Strawberry Fields Forever?

Strawberry growers, recovering from 1996’s cyclospora scare and floods in 1995, reduced the number of acres planted this year by 10% statewide. But the new camarosa is giving them hope for a record crop.

Most Valuable Crops

Strawberries are Orange County’s most valuable food crop. They accounted for 16% of the $234 million in agricultural value in 1995. Top food crop values, in millions: Strawberries $37.6 Avocados $12.6 Celery $9.8 Peppers* $9.0 Green beans $5.6 Tomatoes $5.6 * Bell and miscellaneous

Berry of Choice

The camarosa strawberry is the variety of choice in Orange County, accounting for about 95% of the plants grown here. It supplanted the chandler variety. What makes the camarosa the preferred berry: Begins producing earlier Production cycle is more consistent Higher yield More consistent quality Larger, firmer than chandler berry Sources: Orange County agricultural commissioner, California Strawberry Commission