Slim Pickings for Farmers Seeking Fertile Ground

Charles Peltzer Sr., a third-generation Orange County farmer, always knew the day would come when the county’s cash crops--housing developments and shopping malls--would crowd his Christmas tree farms right out of town.

He just didn’t realize it would happen so soon.

As the region’s booming economy gives rise to acres and acres of development, agricultural families throughout the region are scrambling to find plots of land large enough to farm. Peltzer and his son, pumpkin farmer Charlie Peltzer Jr., learned last month that they will have to leave three of their four farms after the next Christmas season.

“These tree farms were to be my 401(k), and they are now fast disappearing,” Peltzer Sr. said. “I’m 65 years old. There isn’t enough time to switch careers.”

For the younger Peltzer, who five years ago started planting pumpkins in between his father’s Christmas trees at Jamboree Road and Chapman Avenue in Orange, word that he would have to find a new place after this Halloween for the annual pumpkin patch, hay rides and farm activities that draw thousands of kids to their farm also was hard to swallow.

“I don’t want to quit,” he said. “I’m 29, and I’ve worked for my father all my life. I’m trying to stay in Orange County, but if I can’t find big enough acreage, I’ll move on. I just refuse to go set up a pumpkin lot on the asphalt in front of a shopping mall.”

Peltzer’s Christmas trees take about four years to grow tall enough for cutting. Whatever isn’t sold this winter will have to be cleared to make way for a commercial center that is part of the 1,886-home second phase of the Irvine Co.’s Santiago Hills development.

Father and son are anxiously searching for new locations to plant, but so far it doesn’t look promising. “There’s not really land out there to look at,” the senior Peltzer said.

The Peltzers are not alone in their plight. According to the Orange County Agricultural Commission, farming acreage in production in the county shrank 21% from 1988 to 1998. (The figure measures crops that yield a product rather than those still growing, such as young trees that don’t yet bear fruit. It does not include nurseries.) And the trend continues.

“We all know that ground is worth an awful lot of money, significantly more than the revenues you might make growing vegetables or even nursery crops,” said A.G. Kalamura, a partner in the farming concern Orange County Produce, and a board member of the California Department of Agriculture. “We’re kind of an interim activity.”

Despite Orange County’s agricultural heritage--the county takes its name from a commodity--there are few farming operations left that actually own land. The vast majority lease land, more often than not from the Irvine Co. or the Department of Defense.

The area’s farmers say they are used to moving from place to place as their fields give way to golf courses and amusement parks. Their families have done it for decades.

But for the first time, many say they have been unable to find new land in the county to replant.

“It’s sort of like somebody dying,” said Kathy Nakase, executive director of the Orange County Farm Bureau. “If they’re dying of an illness, you know it’s going to happen, but it’s still a shock when they die.”

“It’s a slow crisis because we know the development process is going to continue,” said Orange County Farm Bureau President Robert Seat. “If you talk to most of our members, they’re having a really tough time finding land. . . . When you get down to a certain size, it becomes uneconomical to farm.”

Some have picked up and moved to places with more open space, such as Ventura County and Chino. Others have restructured their businesses by moving from wholesale production to small-scale markets with higher profit margins, selling their goods at farmers markets or through their own roadside stands.

Most have abandoned single-season crops such as oranges and avocados, which occupy the land all year but produce fruit for only one season, for multiple crops with shorter seasons such as squash, beans, celery, lettuce, corn or cucumbers. Agricultural production in Orange County was a nearly $292-million business in 1998, the most recent year for which figures are available.

“I’m retailing more,” said Glenn Tanaka, whose strawberry business once covered a few hundred acres but has dwindled to about 70 acres.

Tanaka said the disappearance of undeveloped land has been the evolving story of Orange County. A lot he once maintained at the corner of Mile Square Regional Park in Fountain Valley became a golf course about 15 years ago. Last year, he lost a 30-acre parcel in Irvine, but he now grows strawberries on a piece of Irvine land that is designated to remain open space.

“I’ve got the best of both worlds,” Tanaka said. “I’m not against development. I like to go to the mall and the movies.”

The Peltzers don’t harbor any anger about their lost leases, which they have always known were short term. The elder Peltzer’s grandfather came to Orange County in 1909 from Kansas, and the family has seen the business through many changes. His father was best known for his citrus holdings. For 25 years, Peltzer Sr. had one of the largest poultry ranches in Orange County, which included 72,000 chickens in 1981, before he converted to Christmas trees. His son began the pumpkin business five years ago.

Both Peltzers say the Irvine Co., which owns all of the land on which they farm, has treated them fairly.

“Their primary business is to develop Orange County into its final usable form, which is urban development,” the elder Peltzer said. “We’re disappointed that the economy is so great and so rampant that it has caused us an early demise. I used to think before this big push started in the late 1990s [that] the urban sprawl would have had a much slower, steady pace.”

The irony that they may be snuffed out by the county’s success is not lost on any of these farmers.

“Nobody wants to have a recession and people out of work,” Seat said. “The Orange County area is blessed with a real opportunity to be a high technology center. We have mixed emotions. We love this county.”