Rains Damage Some Crops

Howard Hooker grabbed a bunch of plump, ripe cherries from a low-hanging branch, where they glistened in the morning sunshine.

He turned them around, exposing a gash in the juicy flesh. “They just exploded,” he explained.

The late spring rains that drenched California brought relief to many farmers, whose water supplies had dwindled over six dry years. But growers like Hooker, whose fruit was ripening just as the latest round of downpours swept through the Central Valley last week, watched as sweet cherries swelled up with moisture and split.

He lost about $200,000 -- all of his Brooks cherries, an early variety that’s very sensitive to rain, and more than one-third of his Tulares, a hardier fruit that ripens a bit later.

According to the California Cherry Council, the state’s cherry growers have lost about $80 million because of the late wet weather. California leads the nation in sweet cherry production, putting out about one-third of what’s grown domestically.

“You fight hard all year -- pests, rodents, you name it -- then it rains, and in 24 hours, you lose the whole crop,” Hooker, who farms 50 acres of the sweet fruit, said last week. “It’s disheartening.”

Cherry farmers weren’t the only ones hurt by the rain and hail in late April and May.

The cool weather has slowed down the development of other crops -- melons are taking longer to grow, rice planting is behind schedule, and processing tomato farmers are wondering whether they’ll get their harvest to packers by the promised dates. Throughout the fertile Central Valley, farmers are reporting split and bruised fruit.

Dennis Plann, Fresno County’s deputy agricultural commissioner, said Fresno County cherry farmers suffered a $16.4-million hit. Nectarine losses were estimated at $1.8 million and plums at $1.2 million.

Plann’s agency has asked the state’s Office of Emergency Services and the federal Farm Service Agency to declare the area an agricultural disaster -- the first step in the weeks-long process that could help the hardest-hit farmers get low-interest loans.

Other counties, including Kern, Tulare and Madera, are going through the same process.

“It’s been just devastating, especially for the cherry growers,” Plann said. “We haven’t seen a year this bad since” 1997-98.

The recent rains dealt the cherries their final blow, but the crop also started out smaller than usual this year, farmers said. A bee pest devastated hives, which hurt pollination when trees were in bloom. A cold, damp spring made for foggy days, keeping even the healthy bees from venturing out.

All of this is resulting in a much smaller crop than expected, said Waine Alto, a field representative for Warmerdam Packing, which usually handles Hooker’s fruit. The company is seeing 60% less fruit than expected, Alto said.

But the picture “isn’t all bad,” said Dave Kranz, a spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation. Ranchers whose pastures were brittle and dry last summer have seen “tremendous” grass growth, Kranz said.

And farmers on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley will get more water than they expected as the rain and melting snowpack in the Sierra Nevada flow into the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta.