Squeezed for Profits

Reeling from seasons of little or no profit, California growers have taken at least 10,000 acres of Valencia oranges out of production in the past year, a move that farm leaders say has resulted in scores of layoffs and millions of dollars in lost revenue for the struggling industry.

The acreage reduction continues a 50-year slide for the state’s Valencia crop, still a proud symbol of California agriculture but beset by years of slumping prices, increased global competition and flagging consumer demand.

Nowhere is the decline more evident than in Ventura County, where growers have uprooted thousands of trees in favor of lemons, avocados and even row crops -- anything able to turn a profit in California’s competitive fruit and vegetable markets.

The value of the crop fell 61% in Ventura County from 1999 to 2001, while land dedicated to Valencias dropped by half -- to less than 10,000 acres -- during the past 30 years.

While Valencia oranges are still a strong component of California’s agricultural economy, statewide acreage for them fell nearly 20% during the same period, from 82,500 acres in 1971 to 66,500 in 2001. Most of the reductions have occurred in the Ventura area and in the San Joaquin Valley.

“It’s distressing,” said Joel Nelsen, president of the Exeter-based California Citrus Mutual trade association.

The group represents 800 growers with more than 110,000 acres of citrus.

“You know growers have their hearts and souls into producing a good piece of fruit, but the marketplace has changed,” Nelsen said. “It’s driven by a combination of factors, but the bottom line is Valencia production just isn’t making money.”

That reality dawns clear along California 126 in the Santa Clara Valley, a rural highway that cuts through Ventura County’s citrus heartland.

Wide blocks of orange trees have been pulled out in recent years, giving the fragrant, food-rich valley the appearance of a vast emerald checkerboard.

Throughout the valley, hundreds of trees lie in giant clumps, sun-dried and brown and waiting to be set ablaze.

In some instances, Valencias have been replaced by other citrus varieties, such as navels. Navels are Ventura County’s second-biggest orange crop, after Valencias, with growers farming 1,400 acres in 2001.

In other cases, the acreage has been supplanted by nursery stock or row crops or simply allowed to lie fallow as growers size up the market and decide what to plant next.

Many growers are finding they can make more money renting their land for crop production than they are able to make selling oranges.

“We’re losing acreage almost on a daily basis,” said Earl McPhail, the county’s agricultural commissioner. “A lot of growers are kind of in a holding pattern, waiting to see what looks like it’s going to be profitable in the long run.”

Across the county, acreage losses have accelerated as economic losses have piled up.

At the Camulos Ranch Co. near Piru, one of the county’s oldest orange growers, land dedicated to Valencias has fallen from about 600 acres a decade ago to 150 acres today.

General manager Matthew Freeman said the past few years have been the worst ever for oranges at the citrus ranch founded in the 1800s by the Spanish settlers who tamed the Santa Clara Valley.

Two years ago, Freeman said, he spent nearly $250,000 to grow 220 acres of Valencias and got a check from the packinghouse for $1.99. He said last year wasn’t much better.

Facing tough economic times and with fewer acres to tend, Freeman said he has been forced to lay off more than half his workforce in the past 1 1/2 years.

“It’s not just us; it’s everybody in this county,” said Freeman, who last week torched 50 acres of uprooted orange trees. “It’s the end of an era and it’s hard to see. But the one thing I’ve learned is that there are no sacred cows anymore. You’ve got to do what makes money.”

Over the past decade, growers in South America, Australia and Africa have stepped up orange production. But they have been able to do so at a fraction of the cost for labor and utilities, allowing them to sell their fruit for less and still make a larger profit than domestic growers.

“Free trade is fine, but it’s not necessarily fair trade,” Freeman said, echoing the sentiments of many farmers who find it increasingly difficult to compete with foreign growers.

Valencias also have been pounded by increased competition from other offshore fruit and citrus varieties shipped to the United States during the summer, when the oranges have traditionally been at the height of their season.

Add to that the fact that many orchards produce fruit of good quality but not as large as other varieties and therefore not in demand by consumers.

Citrus grower Bill Ferry Jr., whose family has farmed in the Tulare County community of Woodlake for three generations, said he has ripped out several blocks of Valencias in recent years and has several more earmarked for removal.

“I see a lot of orchards going out just as I’m driving down the road,” Ferry said. “If my father was speaking, he’d say don’t write them off yet. But just looking at the writing on the wall, I would say Valencias are pretty much a done deal.”

With Ventura County’s Valencia industry heading into a nose dive a few years ago, growers, agricultural experts and others began looking for ways to put the brakes on the economic decline.

They created a task force that looked at all segments of the industry, including ways to carve a niche in the market by promoting Ventura County Valencias the same way Wisconsin promotes cheese or California growers push almonds.

They also established an experimental grove in Santa Paula, developing ways to spur orange trees to deliver bigger and more marketable fruit.

All those efforts have ended now, said Nick Sakovich, a farm advisor with the University of California cooperative extension office in Ventura.

And while they yielded good information, Sakovich said it became apparent that growers were dealing with issues and market forces over which they had little control.

“It finally settled in that this isn’t just a little blip, that the industry will never again be what it used to be,” Sakovich said of a crop that was once the county’s second-biggest moneymaker but today barely cracks the top 10.

“I think there’s always going to be some [Valencia] acreage here,” he said. “The big question is: How far is it going to go down and what’s going to replace what is lost?”