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July 7, 2017
California
Heat damage could further
diminish processing tomato crop
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO
—
Growers of processing to-
matoes are waiting to see
whether the recent heat wave
in California caused exten-
sive damage to a crop that is
already diminished because of
a global glut.
A week of triple-digit
temperatures starting June
16 may have caused flowers
to drop off younger plants
or sunburned or stunted the
growth of more mature fruit,
said Bruce Rominger, a Win-
ters, Calif., grower and board
chairman of the California To-
mato Growers Association.
“I’m sure this heat we just
came out of probably hurt”
the crop, Rominger said. “We
don’t really know how much
damage was done.”
The degree of damage will
become more apparent during
the harvest later in the sum-
mer, he said.
Growers are already ex-
pected to record their lowest
contracted production since
2006, as processors reported
earlier this year they would
have contracts for 11.6 mil-
lion tons, according to the
National Agricultural Statis-
tics Service.
Processors expect produc-
tion this summer will come
from 235,000 acres, the lowest
contracted acreage since 1988
and a 10 percent decrease
from 2016, NASS reports.
The lesser contracts follow
record production in 2014 and
2015, which left a large car-
ryover supply in warehouses.
That has pushed down prices
to growers, from $80 per ton
in 2015 to about $72.50 per
ton last year, according to the
CTGA.
Growers this summer will
need high yields to do more
than break even, Rominger
said.
“There’s not much mon-
ey in it” this season, he said.
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Freshly picked peaches. A pair of University of California cost
analyses suggest that canning peach farmers might benefit from
growing later varieties.
Canning peach growers
could benefit from later
varieties, study finds
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
Jeff Mingay of Iron Tree Solutions in Williams, Calif., changes a pressure line on a tomato harvester.
Processing tomato growers are waiting to see if the recent heat wave caused widespread damage
to their crop.
Most growers have other
crops to fall back on, he said.
Heat damage would be
only the latest in a series of
headaches for tomato growers
in recent years.
In 2013, an outbreak of the
beet curly top virus spoiled
some of the processing to-
mato crop and forced some
growers to replant. That sum-
mer, a one-two punch of un-
seasonable rain in June and
record heat around the Fourth
of July damaged some toma-
toes in northern areas.
As growers were filling
contracts of roughly 14 mil-
lion tons in 2014 and 2015,
drought-related water short-
ages prompted some of them
to idle acreage they would
have planted in other crops.
Weather had already com-
plicated this year’s crop be-
fore the summer began, as
rain in April disrupted plant-
ing, Rominger said.
Amid the heat wave, some
northern areas topped 110 de-
grees on several successive
days.
California leads the world
in processing tomato produc-
tion and accounts for about 94
percent of processing tomato
acreage in the U.S., according
to the USDA Economic Re-
search Service.
MODESTO, Calif. —
Growers of peaches for can-
ning could benefit by invest-
ing in later-harvest varieties,
studies by University of Cali-
fornia researchers suggest.
While processors pay more
for peaches harvested early in
the season, later varieties have
higher yields and are cheaper
to hand-thin the fruit, said the
reports from the UC’s Agricul-
tural Issues Center and Coop-
erative Extension.
Early-season peaches have
less time to grow, so more
fruit must be removed so the
remaining fruit can size. That
means it costs a grower more
to produce fewer peaches, ex-
plained co-author Roger Dun-
can, a Modesto-based UCCE
adviser.
Labor costs will only in-
crease as California moves
toward a $15-per-hour mini-
mum wage by 2022, Duncan
noted.
“You can still make mon-
ey being a peach grower,” he
said. “The problem, of course,
is it’s still very labor intensive
and it’s difficult to find the la-
bor. It’s not only expensive,
but it’s just hard to find. When
it comes to thinning and har-
vesting, you need a lot of labor
and you need it right away.”
Canning peach harvests
generally run from early July
to early September, unlike
fresh-market peaches, which
are picked from May through
September, Duncan said.
Though later varieties are
harvested later in the summer,
all the varieties are susceptible
to heat, he said.
“It all depends on when the
heat hits,” he said. “What hap-
pens is you get peaches that
may not quite be ripe yet, but
inside it kind of ripens faster
than the outside and it could
get mushy. It could go from
almost being ready to pick to
being overripe in a very short
period of time.”
The studies looked at two
hypothetical 100-acre farms
with 40 acres of cling peaches,
with one harvesting early and
the other late. The researchers
found that farmers could net
as much as $800 more per acre
from late-harvesting varieties
because of labor cost savings
and higher yields.
The studies estimate that
extra-early varieties would
have a price of $545 per ton,
a yield of 17 tons per acre, and
a thinning costs of $1,445 per
acre. The late varieties would
have a price of $490 per ton,
a yield of 20 tons per acre and
a thinning cost of $1,177 per
acre, according to the UC’s
estimates.
California
facing severe
fire season
Associated Press
27-2/#4N
LOS ANGELES — With
nearly 30,000 acres charred
already, California could be
in for a severe wildfire season,
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein
said Thursday as firefight-
ers worked to contain blazes
around the state.
Feinstein cited the increase
in brush spawned by the win-
ter’s heavy rains and the recent
severe heat wave that dried out
vegetation.
“Making matters worse,
six years of drought has left
us with more than 100 million
dead trees,” she said in a state-
ment. “This overabundance of
fuel, combined with fires that
are burning hotter and faster,
has created a potentially cata-
strophic scenario in California
that poses an increased risk not
only to property but also the
brave men and women fighting
these fires.”
California has so far not
had the type of infernos that
have destroyed hundreds or
thousands of homes in the past,
but fires have been occurring
from the Oregon border to San
Diego County.
Most have been in wild-
lands but some have occurred
dangerously close to homes,
including two blazes among
hillside residences in the Los
Angeles area on Wednesday.
Active new blazes include
a 760-acre wildfire burning
on the Camp Pendleton Ma-
rine Corps base in San Diego
County and in neighboring
brushlands of San Clemente,
and a 630-acre blaze on the
Mariposa County foothills of
the western Sierra Nevada.
The Pendleton fire resulted
in a smoke alert from region-
al air quality regulators as it
spread a strong odor across Or-
ange and Los Angeles counties
early in the day, but it was 70
percent contained by evening.