Late start for California strawberries

After years of exceedingly dry weather, at least one California farmer was grateful for this year’s wetter winter. But in some ways, the drought was a boon to California strawberry growers, as the unusual weather jump-started the growing season and brought little or no rain during the past couple of springs. Rain — even light rain — can damage ripe and developing strawberries in the fields.

In fact, the dry conditions helped make 2014 and 2015 consecutive record years for California strawberry production, with growers producing more than 39.4 million nine-pound crates the first year and 43.4 million crates the next year.

But that’s not likely to happen this year. Miguel Ramirez and other industry experts, say labor issues have forced many strawberry farmers to cut back on some of their planted acreage, and rain in the latter part of this year’s winter and early spring has damaged a portion of some strawberry crops.

“We are actually behind from the last two years, which were dry winters — four to six weeks behind” in harvesting said Ramirez. Because of the drought, strawberry plants reacted as if spring had started early in 2014 and 2015, so they produced fruit early, and harvesting began in the second or third week of February in the Monterey Bay area and earlier in Southern California.

This year, he said, the wetter, cooler winter that came as a result of a strong El Niño weather pattern created more normal conditions for strawberries, which started bearing fruit in early March.

Unfortunately for strawberry farmers, the Central Coast got hit by a series of rain storms in the past month, including one earlier this week. While they weren’t severe, they were bad for strawberries.

In some cases, if the damage isn’t too bad, the fruit can be sold for processing into juice and other food products rather than as table fruit, experts say.

The rain also delays harvesting, as work crews have to quickly remove damaged and mushy strawberries before they cause undamaged fruit to rot on the vine, said Mark Bolda, a University of California Cooperative Extention farm adviser on strawberries and cranberries for Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito counties.

Labor is also an issue. Ramirez left 25 to 30 acres unplanted this year, because of challenges in finding workers to tend to and harvest his strawberries. "Mexico’s economy has improved a lot. It’s grown faster than ours. There’s no reason for people to come here to find work," he added.

Commercial growers in California planted 32,515 acres of strawberries this year, 5,585 acres fewer than last year, according to the California Strawberry Commission.

All these factors are leading to a decline in California strawberry production so far this year, with a total of about 27.3 million crates filled as of April 9, far less than the 43.4 million packed by the same date in 2015.

Source: visaliatimesdelta.com