Getting Soaked

In the 45 years that Basil E. Mills has grown and shipped vegetables in this fertile region, he can’t recall ever having seen so much lettuce get washed away.

“We’ve lost at least 10 fields of leaf lettuce so far,” he said one drizzly morning last week, before the latest spate of rainstorms. “That’s highly unusual.”

With heavy, El Nino-related showers lingering into mid-May, produce-market disruptions will last through June “and possibly into July,” said Mills, president of Mills Inc. in Salinas. The area is the nation’s prime source of such foods as leaf and head lettuces, broccoli and cauliflower.

From cherries to berries to rice, crops throughout the state continue to take a drubbing from the tenacious weather phenomenon, and that spells trouble for food shoppers. They can expect not only spot shortages of many fruits and vegetables, but gyrating prices and diminished quality. A fungal disease called anthracnose, for example, has made much of the state’s lettuce look as if it has been blasted with a shotgun.

“Any shortage usually means higher prices to consumers,” said Jerry Siebert, an agricultural economist at UC Berkeley.

Shoppers have already endured weeks of high prices for lettuce, particularly romaine, which has soared to as much as $2.50 a head, 2 1/2 times the usual level.

Some restaurants have temporarily wiped Caesar salads from their menus.

Spotting opportunity in California’s woes, growers in New Mexico and Arizona put in extra plantings of lettuce. Those harvests have recently depressed the prices paid to farmers, compounding the pain for California growers. Low prices make it tough for them to recoup extra costs for replantings and treatments for bugs and fungi.

Retail prices rise quickly but tend to be “sticky on the way down,” even as prices paid to growers plummet, Siebert said.

Here is how other crops are faring:

* Almonds. Cool temperatures kept bees from pollinating orchards. Growers expect to harvest about 27% fewer nuts than last year’s record-breaking haul.

* Cherries. Harvesting in the San Joaquin Valley is several days late, and growers expect a lighter harvest.

* Cotton. Hampered by chilly, wet weather, farmers are weeks behind on plantings. Some in Kern, Kings and Tulare counties are considering switching to lima and black-eyed beans but face prices that are about 25% below last year’s because farmers nationwide are harvesting more than consumers want.

* Pears. Heavy hail and rain thinned orchards in Lake and Mendocino counties last month. Unless things dry out and warm up soon, yields and fruit size could be reduced.

* Rice. The wet, cool spring has stalled plantings in the Sacramento Valley, putting growers three weeks behind, the worst such situation since the 1950s.

* Strawberries. Pounding rains and rot have pushed shipments 23% below last year’s level.

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Martha Groves can be reached by e-mail at martha.groves@latimes.com or by fax at (213) 473-2480.