Agriculture California

It's been a punishing year for most California orange growers. But you'd never know it by checking out the produce aisle. Although prices paid to farmers for this season's big crop of navel oranges have plunged, supermarket prices in many cases have jumped, outpacing even last year when a freeze wiped out two-thirds of the crop.

California's farms and vineyards could vanish by the end of the century, and its major cities could be in jeopardy, if Americans do not act to slow the advance of global warming, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said Tuesday.

J.G. Boswell Co. has been the main force in farming within the Tulare Lake basin for more than 70 years. The company was founded by Col. James Griffin Boswell, one of 13 children from a patrician cotton-farming family that was chased out of Georgia by the boll weevil in the 1920s. Boswell migrated to Corcoran and began carving out a cotton-growing and -ginning empire. He and other farmers struggled to control the four rivers that emptied into the lake.

California beekeepers managed to pump out enough nectar last year to reestablish the Golden State as the nation's top honey producer. But at honeybee farms throughout the state, there has been little comfort in recapturing the crown. Though honey prices are higher than they've been in years, the industry faces a swarm of troubles, from cutthroat competition by foreign exporters to voracious pests that can gut production and drive beekeepers out of business.

A decision by Sunkist Growers, the country's largest citrus cooperative, to market imported lemons from Argentina has soured relations with many of its 6,500 members in California and Arizona, especially those in Ventura County whose fruit would directly compete with the imports. Sunkist's decision marks the first time the Sherman Oaks-based co-op has ever put its label on foreign fruit.

The phasing out of one of the nation's most widely used pesticides will begin taking a bite out of California's strawberry business this year, experts say, raising costs, lowering yields and giving Mexican imports a competitive advantage. Researchers at UC Davis estimate that California's nearly $850-million strawberry industry, which produces most of the nation's crop, will lose 20% of its production with the ban on the fumigant methyl bromide.

In another weather-related blow to the nation's largest fresh fruit producer, Dole Food Co. said Monday that damage to its California citrus crop caused by last month's severe frost will force it to take a $20-million charge in the fourth quarter. The Westlake Village-based company said the damage will reduce 1999 operating profit by $10 million to $15 million.

In a storm season that officials now consider the worst in state history, the California Department of Food and Agriculture Wednesday raised its estimate of crop losses from the winter rains to $519 million. Even that figure will probably keep rising, said Michael Chrisman, a department undersecretary, as a new round of wind and rain was tormenting farmers on Wednesday. The rain was especially heavy in the Napa and Sacramento valleys.

A rival to the United Farm Workers union was declared the winner in an election to represent workers at the nation's largest strawberry grower. Final election results at Watsonville-based Coastal Berry Co. showed 725 workers had voted for the Coastal Berry of California Farm Workers Committee, compared with 616 for the United Farm Workers. The Coastal Berry committee already led the UFW by 90 votes in the June 4 balloting, but 92 disputed ballots remained uncounted, until this week.

California crop-dusters, grounded for a third time because of terrorist fears, voiced concern Monday that prolonged delays in aerial spraying could damage the state's $29-billion-a-year agricultural industry. Although groundings so far have had little effect on crops, agricultural officials worried that future delays could allow pests, weeds and disease to establish a foothold in the state's fields and orchards, potentially devaluing crops or wiping some out altogether.

Mark Neal eased the Ford Expedition along the rutted path, surveying the carnage like a despairing general who has watched his boys take another whipping. In Neal's eyes, this verdant landscape in the heart of Napa Valley's wine country is indeed a battlefield, a place where many of his beloved grapevines have literally been nipped in the bud. "Look, this one's totally toasted," Neal said, holding deadened sauvignon blanc buds gently between his fingers.

The phasing out of one of the nation's most widely used pesticides will begin taking a bite out of California's strawberry business this year, experts say, raising costs, lowering yields and giving Mexican imports a competitive advantage. Researchers at UC Davis estimate that California's nearly $850-million strawberry industry, which produces most of the nation's crop, will lose 20% of its production with the ban on the fumigant methyl bromide.

Clementines are no longer just for Christmas stockings. The small Spanish oranges sold in small wooden boxes have become a winter staple in much of the United States. "My daughter won't eat other oranges but she'll devour clementines," Enid Kassner of Arlington, Va., said after picking up a box at a suburban Washington supermarket. "You can peel them easily, they don't have seeds and they're sweet." The U.S.

With a wing and a prayer, scientists are marching into orchards this summer and taking the caps off vials of tiny, hired killers. The release of hundreds of wasps is an escalation in the war against pests that threaten California's citrus, its eucalyptus trees and now, even the state's wines. The latest struggle is to protect California's $33-billion wine industry, from Temecula's petite syrahs to the Central Valley's chardonnays.

The California Supreme Court on Monday sided with farmers against cities and water districts in a Mojave River Basin case that could have a major effect on water disputes around the state. Attorneys for the California Farm Bureau and the Imperial Irrigation District, the nation's largest agricultural water district, hailed the decision as a victory for farmers in their fight to keep rapidly growing cities from taking their water without payment.

Crews have begun spraying San Joaquin Valley residential areas in an aggressive effort to slow the spread of the glassy-winged sharpshooter while scientists search for ways to eradicate--or live with--the voracious pest. The infestation in the Central Valley has raised fears that a bug described as one of the most serious threats ever to California agriculture could become established in the nation's premier farming area.

Bill was riding the baler in the field below, Jana was driving the loader, and Russ had wagon duty. So Pat O'Brien rolled a 110-pound bale into the shade and sat down to talk about harvesting hay. Enough hay to feed Pierce College's small herd of cattle. And the horses. And the sheep. And then some. Twenty-five hundred bales, worth about $25,000--money the school doesn't have--for an agriculture program that has been withering for years.

A decision by Sunkist Growers, the country's largest citrus cooperative, to market imported lemons from Argentina has soured relations with many of its 6,500 members in California and Arizona, especially those in Ventura County whose fruit would directly compete with the imports. Sunkist's decision marks the first time the Sherman Oaks-based co-op has ever put its label on foreign fruit.

San Ramon-based Tri Valley Growers, one of the country's largest canneries, received approval from an Oakland bankruptcy judge for a $270-million loan that will allow it to continue operating this season. Tri Valley's ability to pay its growers and process their crops was called into question after the cooperative filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.