Report: Kern's 2009 crop value down 10.5 percent from previous year
| Wednesday, Jul 14 2010 01:47 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Jul 14 2010 05:50 PM
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A full crop of almonds almost ready for harvest along Lerdo Highway.
Rows of almond trees seem to go for miles along Merced Avenue, north of town.
Dairy cattle play king of the hill at this farm on Lerdo Highway.
Farm workers head home after working all day in the grape vineyards, north of Bakersfield off Lerdo Highway.
Almond trees dominate the area along Merced Avenue, north of Bakersfield.
The long overdue 2009 Kern County Crop Report was finally released Wednesday, and the news wasn’t good.
The total value of agricultural commodities produced in Kern County last year was $3.6 billion, down 10.5 percent from the value of county crops in 2008, according to the report, which normally is distributed in May.
The crop values do not take into account production, marketing or transportation costs and do not reflect producers’ net incomes.
Ruben Arroyo, agricultural commissioner for the county’s Department of Agriculture and Measurement Standards, was out of the office Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.
But in a cover letter submitted to the Kern County Board of Supervisors, Arroyo wrote that “the major factors affecting the decrease ... were significant price and acreage decreases in field crops, livestock and poultry products, livestock and poultry, and vegetable crops.
“These decreases were partially offset by increases in fruit and nut crops and seed crops.”
The top five commodities last year were grapes, milk, almonds, carrots and citrus, which make up more than $2.2 billion of the total ag value for the county.
“We had some mild reshuffling, but it didn’t change much,” Glenn Fankhauser, deputy director of the Department of Agriculture and Measurement Standards, said of the rankings.
Most significantly, grapes ($664.5 million) bumped previously No. 1 milk ($437.6 million) to second place.
That didn’t surprise Michael Marsh, chief executive officer of the trade group Western United Dairymen.
Last year “was a devastating year for the dairy producers of California as they saw production costs rocket to new highs at the same time that milk prices have fallen to record lows in the global economic depression,” Marsh said.
The state has 1,700 dairies left after losing 109 last year and 99 the year before, he said.
In 2008, grapes were No. 2 in Kern.
Third-ranked almonds ($435.3 million) rose one from the No. 4 spot in 2008, and fourth-ranked carrots ($343.1 million) were up one from fifth place before.
Citrus ($333 million) fell from No. 3 in 2008 to fifth place last year.
Johnston Farms in Edison said citrus remains healthy, though. The farm’s orange and grapefruit sales were stronger than sales of its field crops, potatoes and red peppers, said grower Dennis Johnston.
He added that eastern Kern County has had fewer irrigation woes because it has more access to protected water supplies.
Western Kern County, on the other hand, is more reliant on water pumped from the delta where the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers meet. That water has been the subject of fierce litigation since a federal judge handed down a ruling designed to bolster threatened fish in the delta.
“Obviously water supply and pumping restrictions had a huge impact on Kern County’s farm economy and jobs,” said Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, a group of growers and other water users. “Water is the lifeblood of the local economy, and farmers and farmworkers both suffer when government restrictions limit supplies and exacerbate already difficult conditions.
“The outlook for this year is also bad considering local farms are receiving only a 50 percent supply despite well-above average precipitation and snowpack.”
A lot of growers have had to leave land fallow because they couldn’t count on sufficient irrigation, said Mike Young of Wegis Ranch in Buttonwillow, which grows almonds, pistachios and cherries, among other crops.
“Many banks at the beginning of the year weren’t even giving operating loans unless you had a guaranteed water supply,” he said. “Even if the water did come through later, you couldn’t plan for it because you couldn’t get a loan.”
Kern’s crop value has gone up almost every year in the last decade, rising from about $1 billion in 2000 to a peak of more than $4 billion in 2007.
Fankhauser said last year’s 10.5 percent decline probably had as much to do with lower prices as lower production.
“We didn’t have as much fallowed land as Fresno and Kings (counties), which also had some pretty significant decreases in crop values,” he said. “But obviously we get a lot of our water from similar sources.
“If we produced less, it would be the result of other factors that we couldn’t put our finger on, like weather.”
After three years of drought, above average rain this year was warmly welcomed, but Mother Nature also dropped spring temperatures to cooler than usual.
That cost Slayman Marketing Inc., a pomegranate grower near Maricopa, about a third of its crop this year.
“Because of El Nino, it was 70 degrees in February and 50 degrees in April, just bouncing all over the place,” farmer Dee Slayman said. “The pomegranates didn’t like it. The first set of blossoms just dropped on the ground.”
