Salinas strawberry grower continues family tradition

Roy Fuentes, a 1979 graduate of Watsonville High School, smiles when he recalls being part of the school's 1978 Central Coast Region champion soccer team, and when he relates that his 5-year-old grandson has already learned the touch of picking strawberries without damaging the soft fruit.

"I'm a second-generation farmer, and hopefully my children will finish their education and do it better than I," he said. "My daughter is studying food safety, and one of my sons is studying ag business. We want to keep the farm for them. I still partner with Driscoll's, but I want to keep this business for my kids."

On a piece of organic strawberry ground outside Salinas, Fuentes, one of the organic berry growers for Driscoll's, is continuing a dream inherited from his father that he hopes to pass on one day to his children and grandchildren.

"I immigrated from Mexico in 1973," he said. "My dad started work as a strawberry picker for a farmer in Watsonville, and he moved up. I really enjoyed working in the field and learning about the crop."

Fuentes told his story, and what he has learned about growing organic berries, to 100 farmers from around the country as they toured the Salinas Valley the day before the 37th Annual Ecological Farming Conference in Pacific Grove.

The strawberry beds at the Salinas ranch are covered with silver mulch which is laid right over another black mulch: a system Fuentes has found over the years to be the most effective way of controlling weeds without synthetic herbicides.

"When I first started growing organic strawberries, I tried all kinds of plastic," Fuentes said. "The challenge was the weeds. We found out the silver over the black plastic did the best with the weeds. If you want to do early production, you use the clear plastic, but you're going to have a lot of weeds."

He has also developed preferred strategies for dealing with the major insect pests: aphids that show up in the spring, followed by the early summer mites and finally, the midsummer lygus bugs.

"Sometimes we purchase some ladybugs and release them at night for the aphids, because during the day they would just fly away," Fuentes said. "The two-spotted spider mite is probably our biggest bug. We release persimillis, and they get established."

He sucks the lygus bugs off the plants with a vacuum, which must be timed carefully because it removes the beneficial insects along with the pests.

"Our summer enemy is lygus bugs, which make the berries crooked," Fuentes said. "I use a vacuum, which sucks up the good bugs with the bad, because it can't say, 'Oh, that's a lygus bug, so I'll suck it up.'"

Fuentes has earned a reputation as one of the more capable farmers who has learned how to respond to the challenges of organic berry growing.

"Roy is one of the pioneer organic strawberry growers, as well as blackberries and raspberries," said Amigo Cantisano, the organic farm advisor who has led the pre-conference tour since it began 30 years ago.

As an organic farmer, Fuentes has already lived with the soil-disease challenges that are now faced by all strawberry growers, because 2017 is the first year without methyl bromide fumigation.

"Finding an alternative to fumigants that works and is economic is tricky," Cantisano said. "It's not very common that a second-time organic strawberry crop in the same field looks this good."

The tour visited Fuentes at a field where strawberries are grown only once every four years as part of the rotation on the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic research ranch outside Salinas.

"We're creating a good rotation for strawberries," Fuentes said. "USDA researcher Eric Brennan created a four-year rotation here. Every four years we do strawberries. For me it's been phenomenal because the land is getting its rest, and with the cover crops the plants do very well. It's not a very good practice to come in with strawberries the second year."

Before planting his strawberries, Fuentes applied 1,000 pounds of feather meal fertilizer per acre to feed the crop.

Over the course of the season, he is able to harvest yields that, not that long ago, would have been impressive for conventional strawberry production.

"With this variety, Sweet Anne, we can harvest 6,500 to 6,800 crates," Fuentes said. "Every variety performs differently. With Buena Vista, it was about 5,200."

The yields have ironically help create a crisis, as organic berry growers receive reduced price premiums but, like other growers, have to contend with labor shortages.

"It used to be if you got 4,000 crates, that was a great year; now if you get 4,000 crates you're out of business," Cantisano said. "We're going to be facing some hard times here with labor. It's not just the strawberries, it's the vegetables, too."

Fuentes keeps the faith that if he pays attention to his crop, the rest will somehow work itself out.

"Right now, we are facing a lot of challenges," he said. "The non-harvest costs are going up, and there's a lot of organic fruit on the market, so the prices have come down. It's tough, and it's getting tougher. We have these challenges; I'm just going to take it as it comes every year."

(Bob Johnson is a reporter in Davis. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@aol.com.)