Friday, December 25, 1998

'Too cold for too long' -- California crops frozen, millions in losses

By CLAIRE VITUCCI

Associated Press

SANTA PAULA, Calif. -- Bob Pinkerton labored through the night trying to keep his citrus grove warm, hoping to protect the fragile lemon trees that bear his livelihood on their branches.

The farmer ran wind machines and sprinklers until dawn as puddles of water froze and icicles formed on the precious fruit. Ice crunched under his feet.

"You can't just trust everything, roll over and pull the covers up a little more," Pinkerton said Wednesday amid the racket of propellers. "You better be on the job. It's your business."

Three straight nights of freezing temperatures have caused at least $591 million in damage to California's citrus industry. The tally comes from just three counties. It is a grim number that is expected to grow.

Supermarket prices for oranges could triple in the next few days, wholesalers said. Navel oranges that sold for 35 cents a pound Tuesday had jumped to 90 cents a pound Wednesday, David John, an export buyer for General Produce in Sacramento told the Los Angeles Times.

The citrus harvest has just begun in California, second only to Florida in orange production and the supplier of most of the nation's fresh market oranges. Florida oranges are mostly used for juice. California also produces 80 percent of the nation's lemon supply.

While Pinkerton and other farmers scrambled to save their crops, the cold air that has spilled out of Canada spread a deadly sheet of ice from Texas through the Tennessee Valley. Deaths, mostly traffic related, have been reported in at least a half-dozen states in the nation's first true cold snap of the season.

Here, it is the crops that are dying.

A hard freeze warning was posted again this morning for California's agriculturally rich southern and central valleys, where overnight temperatures dropped into the high teens and low 20s. The mercury dipped to 19 in Bakersfield and 21 in Fresno at 4:30 a.m. today.

Fruit can be severely damaged when the temperature dips to 26 degrees for four to six hours, said Bill Spencer, president of Associated Citrus Packers Inc., a major lemon producer and shipper.

Long hours of freezing temperatures have blanketed central California's San Joaquin Valley, especially in Tulare County, which supplies 50 percent of the state's oranges.

County officials, along with those from Fresno and Kern counties, were planning to seek federal aid for farmers by asking the state to declare their communities disaster areas.

"Based on preliminary damage surveys, our growers will be lucky to salvage more than 15 percent of the county's citrus crop," said Leonard Craft, Tulare County's agricultural commissioner. "It was too cold for too long."

Temperatures in the Yuma, Ariz., area, which produces most of the nation's winter lettuce crop and millions of dollars worth of lemons, also dipped into the 20s overnight Tuesday and Wednesday.

While citrus growers can irrigate their fields when temperatures dip near freezing because water gives off heat as it cools, little can be done to protect the fields of iceberg, romaine and red leaf. Lettuce grows close to the ground and its leaves are heavy with water.

Some growers used smudge pots, which burn to produce warm smoke, or paid as much as $700 an hour to rent helicopters to hover over their crops, using the rotor blades to stir up the cold air in hope of raising temperatures just a vital degree or two.

When dawn broke Wednesday, the warming sun relieved Pinkerton from his task. The farmer prepared to nap a few hours before again defending his grove of trees in the battle with winter.

"I think they're all right," he said with a sigh. "It depends on how long the freeze lasts. To really see the heavy damage in a tree it takes several weeks."

In the San Joaquin Valley, weary orange grower Terry Baker also stayed up all night to make sure the sprinklers were working properly on his 220 acres of orange and lemon groves in eastern Tulare County.

"You can always tell who the orange growers are," he said, "because they're the ones with bags under their eyes."