Crops Going Down the Drain

Farm workers scrambled frantically under heavy rains Saturday to save what they could of this year’s strawberry crop, while a top agriculture official predicted that overall farm losses countywide could be triple the amount originally estimated.

Before Friday’s pounding, county agriculture officials estimated damage to avocados, lemons, strawberries and other row crops at $5.5 million. But Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, believes the next update will be significantly worse.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the original estimate triples,” Laird said Saturday. “There’s no way anyone in agriculture can experience anything but negative results from here on out.”

With low-lying areas already drenched and many culverts crammed with tree limbs, illegally dumped trash and all manner of debris from the month’s rains, local farmland simply cannot handle another deluge, he said. And other than continuing to clear drainage pipes and trying to salvage what remaining crops they can, there are few precautions farmers can take that they have not already taken.

“There’s not a whole lot else they can do at this point,” Laird said. “Any time you get rains like this, anyone in low-lying areas gets clobbered.

“But we’re at the point now where nobody’s being spared.”

In Camarillo and Oxnard, farm workers raced Saturday to rescue what had been a promising strawberry crop, but stiff rains eventually forced them from the fields, pummeling low-lying farmland once again.

John Ferro, a partner in the 275-acre Saticoy Berry Farm, said he has all but given up on the current yield of strawberries after much fruitless work.

Now, he said, he is worried that the plants could be so damaged that the entire crop will be a scratch.

“The bottom line is, we’ve kissed the fruit goodbye,” Ferro said. “We’ve lost the berries that were out there, and now we’re worrying about the plants themselves getting mildew or fungus.

“It was such a good year up until these last storms,” he added. “Now we’re running amok.”

Owner Mike Mobley of Progressive Land Management, which manages about 600 acres of avocado and citrus crops for 35 customers, said his employees spent Saturday clearing pipes and cleaning up the junk left behind by Friday’s storm.

So far, Mobley said, the crops he oversees have come out of the rains in reasonable shape, which is usually the case for perennial tree crops such as lemons and avocados.

The main barrancas between Ventura and Fillmore were mostly clear Saturday, thanks to efforts of the California Department of Transportation and county flood control officials, but many of the smaller water conduits leading to them are strewn with debris, he said.

“It’s just a mess,” said Mobley, a former Farm Bureau president. “After yesterday’s storm, there is a lot of clearing to do.”

This year’s floods have been a major headache, said Tom Hall of the 40-acre K.B. Hall Ranch in Upper Ojai, one of the few local agricultural operations still farming apricots, once a major county crop.

But stiff rains are nothing new to local farmers, Hall said. He believes everyone should make it through the season in decent shape, if a little poorer.

“On our place, we have a couple of seasonal creeks that run through the middle of our property, and we just let it rip,” Hall said, just before heading out to check on some old family belongings in his barn. “We’ve been here for 130 years, so if we were going to get flooded out, it would have happened by now.”

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County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control Department for the 24-hour period ending at 8 p.m. Saturday. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall Rainfall Normal rainfall Location last 24 hours since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 1.61 18.88 7.87 Casitas Dam 3.03 30.90 13.63 Casitas Rec. 2.76 29.69 13.57 Center Fillmore 2.13 22.48 11.04 Matilija Dam 2.32 29.93 15.35 Moorpark 1.61 19.41 8.52 Ojai 2.33 24.61 12.20 Upper Ojai 2.87 27.28 13.12 Oxnard 1.50 23.60 8.39 Piru 1.81 18.96 9.93 Port Hueneme 1.22 21.13 8.24 Santa Paula 3.27 22.72 10.23 Simi Valley 0.35 17.19 8.19 Thousand Oaks 2.01 20.46 8.92 Ventura Govt. 2.20 27.01 9.28 Center 2.20 27.01 9.28

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