The Year in Review: An Unflinching Autopsy

The Christmas freeze that frosted the Central Valley and put an effective end to more than half of the year’s citrus grown in California was a fitting bookend to one of the worst years for agriculture in memory.

After all, 1998 began with a freeze. Granted, this one was centered in Baja California, but that’s where roughly 65% of U.S. winter vegetables are grown. The freeze disrupted shipments of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and cucumbers for months.

Between the two freezes came El Nino, which brought heavy rains and cool, cloudy weather. When the rains finally broke in August, scorching temperatures followed, shutting down agriculture again.

How bad was 1998? Of the 10 leading fruit and vegetable crops in California, six reported harvests more than 20% smaller than the previous year’s.

“1998? We’re done with it; let’s get out of this ugly year,” says Shann Blue of California Citrus Mutual, a grower’s association. “And if you’re looking at the big picture, let’s get out of this whole decade. We started with a bad freeze in 1990 too.”

The severity of the damage to the California citrus crop has not yet been totaled. Because much of the fruit won’t show scarring until after it has thawed, it is taking a while to tally the statistics. Blue says that only 15% to 20% of the state’s citrus was harvested before the freeze and that perhaps half of what remained was lost.

What’s more, that comes on top of what was projected to be a 23% drop from last year, because of difficult early growing conditions brought about by El Nino.

Dole Food Co., which has some 6,500 acres of citrus in the Central Valley, has just announced a projected $20-million loss because of the freeze, which affected its groves of navel and Valencia oranges, lemons and grapefruits.

Rounding out the other important losers, almonds are down almost 30%, fresh tomatoes 25%, walnuts 20% and garlic 25%. Strawberries were down marginally, about 4%, and statistics are not yet available for broccoli and head lettuces.

The state’s most valuable fruit crop--table grapes--were down 25% from the previous year.

“In speaking to growers who have been in the business all their lives, they say they’ve never seen anything like it,” says Kathleen Nave, executive vice president of the California Table Grape Commission. “This has been a most unusual year.”