State's strawberry growers produce bumper crop in 2003

By Kathy Coatney

When making an assessment of the 2003 crop year, California's fresh strawberry growers are in general consensus that it was a good year.

California produced 113 million trays of fresh strawberries in 2003, a 12 million tray increase from 2002. The rise is due in part to increased acreage. There were approximately 28,230 acres of strawberries planted statewide last year, a 5.2 percent increase from 2002.

One of those growers is Elia Vasquez of Watsonville. Vasquez, who currently sits on the California Farm Bureau Federation board of directors and is past president of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau, started with 2 acres of strawberries in 1970 and went as high as 170 acres, but in recent years she has dropped to about 50 acres.

Weather impacted the 2003 strawberry crop, Vasquez said. "We didn't get the high yield, but in return we got a better market. So I think overall it was fine. Actually, I guess you would say it was a pretty good year."

Another grower who thought the 2003 season was good is Mark Murai, a third generation strawberry farmer in Santa Anna. Murai is a member of the Orange County Farm Bureau, and he has a total of 180 acres, 60 of which are planted in strawberries.

"We had record production as far as the state goes. The processed market, it was a decent market last year, so I think in general the growers did OK," Murai said.

Approximately 382 million pounds of strawberries were sold into the processed market in 2003, and 83 percent of all fresh and processed strawberries come from California.

"The freezer pack is the tail of the dog if you will," said Mike Collins, president for Anacapa Foods in Oxnard and chairman of the California Processing Strawberry Advisory Board. When the price for fresh strawberries drop, many growers sell into the processed market, and about 25 percent to 35 percent of a grower's acreage goes to processed.

The major cereal companies have introduced formulations with dehydrated strawberries. These new cereals have been very popular with consumers so demand is expected to increase.

"From a California processor's perspective, this is an emerging market," Collins said. California processors were not selling dehydrated strawberries to any large extent until the last few years. U.S. manufacturers are currently unable to meet this relatively new demand, so consequently cereal companies have looked offshore for dehydrated strawberries.

Will U.S. manufacturers expand to meet these dehydrated needs? "Absolutely. That is the indication that they've given us," Collins said. Anacapa Foods plans to at least double, if not triple,its IQF (individually quick frozen) production in the 2004 season, he added.

"I would say correspondingly aside from the cereal use, you're seeing a higher demand for frozen strawberries, IQF as well as other berries, blueberries particularly, in the IQF 1-pound retail bag," Collins said.

The U.S. government contracted for about 10 million pounds of frozen strawberries for the school lunch programs for 2003, and they appear to be on track to do that again in 2004, Collins said.

Strawberry growers across the state have expressed concern about the scheduled phase out of methyl bromide in 2005, noting that the alternatives are lackluster at best. "We use methyl bromide, we depend on methyl bromide, I'm a methyl bromide farmer," Vasquez said, adding that fruit quality would definitely suffer if methyl bromide is no longer available.

Murai said he had good results the first year with some of the methyl bromide alternatives. "I was very optimistic," he said, but that soon changed.

By the second and third year, Murai began having massive crop losses. "I was losing whole fields before I even started picking," he said, and added that his fields began developing diseases that originated from outside of the United States.

Dan Legard, director of research and education for the California Strawberry Commission, said, currently only about 20 percent of the strawberry acreage is using alternatives fumigants.

According to Legard, there are two alternatives to methyl bromide for use in strawberries-Telone and chloropicrin in combination. "Those products have been around as long as methyl bromide," Legard continued, but methyl bromide remains the better product from efficacy to cost.

A drip application has been developed for the alternative fumigants, and it has reduced the cost of application significantly; however, drip application doesn't work on hillsides. About a quarter of the strawberry industry is on hillsides, and hillside acreage is expected to increase.

The applications have to be more precise when using the alternative treatments. "Methyl bromide was such a good product that if you made some mistakes in application, didn't apply it perfectly, it still worked. The alternatives don't have that forgiveness," Legard said.

Growers are currently limited on the amount of methyl bromide they can purchase, plus it is scarce and much more expensive then in past years because of the approaching phase out in 2005.

The strawberry industry has applied for a critical use exemption for methyl bromide. Even if the exemption is approved, there is concern methyl bromide won't be affordable for growers.A new product called iodomethane (trade name Midas) is in the registration process. "It looks like of all the fumigants that are available or in the regulatory pipeline, it's (iodomethane) the best. It mirrors the efficacy and the application ease of methyl bromide. It looks like it spreads better in the soil, controls more of the disease and pest problems that growers face," Legard said, and added, he's hoping it will be affordable for growers to use.

It had been hoped iodomethane would be registered by 2003, but approval isn't expected before 2005, the phase out date. "Even if we get that through the process and have it available in 2005, the industry will need several years to learn how to use it, and adapt to it, and work out the kinks before we can fully implement it," Legard said.