Food Bank Profits From Navel Orange Price Slump

Roger Davis, the farm and field coordinator at Food Share, has noticed a pattern.

On Tuesday, his group of volunteer pickers gathered navel oranges. Wednesday--in an odd change of pace--they stooped over broccoli. Thursday: navel oranges. Today: Well, it looks like navel oranges, again. And many more of the golden orbs are on the schedule.

A flood of the sweet jewels has caused slumping prices this season, which has prompted some of the county’s growers to give away their bounty. In return they receive not only a good feeling and a potential tax write-off, but they won’t be left with a pile of fallen fruit to fester.

And for Food Share’s volunteers, such generosity means a titanic amount of oranges to pluck--3,600 pounds of them on Tuesday alone. The organization is so overwhelmed it could use a few more gleaners to help with the picking, Davis said.

“We’ve already picked a lot,” Davis said. “And I still have a lot more than we can pick before they fall.”

Food Share is the county’s largest food bank, providing groceries to about 30,000 low-income people each month.

On Thursday, grower Dale Filkins of Fillmore opened up his small orchard to the volunteers. A gung-ho band of retirees, they cleaned out Filkins’ nearly four acres of navel oranges in a matter of minutes.

Their strategy is simple: Fill a carton. Toss it in the truck. Repeat.

They choose to participate--sometimes under a blazing sun, sometimes in the mud and muck--for reasons they toss off with practiced good humor.

“I had retired and the fish weren’t biting,” said John Zauner, who at 98 considers himself the granddaddy of the group. “So, I hooked up with these guys.”

He and the other volunteers grab only the oranges on lower branches, salvaging fruit that may be scrawny and rough-skinned but tastes as sweet, they say, as any glossy, pumped-up navel orange in the grocery store. Otherwise, these oranges would only be crushed underfoot, not delivered to people who need them.

“I’m contributing a bit to humanity, so this wouldn’t be a total loss,” said Henry Nakagawa, 79, of Santa Paula. “It’s good exercise for an old man.”

The agency sends out receipts at the end of the month so that growers can receive tax deductions, but most farmers said that the amount they actually write-off would only be nominal.

“I really get nothing but good feelings from it,” Filkins said.

The glut in this season’s navel orange crop, predicted to be up 90% from last year, feels even more painful for growers after 1999’s spectacular navel orange prices.

A freeze in the Central Valley gave farmers in warmer Ventura County--where navels are mostly a niche crop--a prime opportunity to sell their healthy fruit.

But thanks to this year’s bumper crops statewide, many growers began harvesting early, fearing a freeze, and flooded the market, said Claire Peters, a spokeswoman for Sunkist Growers Inc.

And, some Ventura County growers reported problems with winds, which don’t harm the fruit’s sweetness but can leave the outside looking pitted.

A grower might have made $21 for a 75-pound box in March 1999, according to figures from the California Agricultural Statistics Service.

In March of this year, a farmer could only expect $7.58 for the same size box.

For many, it’s simply not worth the money it costs to pick and pack the oranges--even after all the work they’ve already put in.

Bob Dudley, 71, is one of those growers. He gets up in the dark and doesn’t head back to his house until the sun starts going down. The Fillmore rancher is stoic about the hard work: This is just what you do when you grow oranges, he said.

“If a grower’s lucky, he’s basically breaking even,” said Dudley, who donated much of his crop to Food Share. “I dropped a lot of fruit, the biggest crop ever.”

But for most Ventura County growers a loss in the navel orange market is not a make-or-break development.

Most also grow other produce.

Some of the navel orange producers who have donated to Food Share consider growing a hobby--even if they do attempt to sell the results.

It’s Valencia oranges that form the foundation of the Ventura County orange market. The county’s growers tend 10,746 acres of Valencia oranges, and only 1,136 acres of navel oranges, according to the county agricultural commissioner’s office. Last year, gross sales of navels were only $3.8 million, compared with $43.4 million worth of Valencias sold.

But, tending oranges this year has proved something most growers have long known: It’s not a livelihood for those intent on dependable returns, or incapable of sweating out hard times.

Cynthia Fairburn, who grows oranges mainly for pleasure, certainly knows that.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” said Fairburn, who farms a few acres in Ojai and has high praise for Food Share. “We just keep on going.”