April 19, 2007


watsonville
Strawberry industry back on its feet after last spring
By Tom Ragan
Sentinel staff writer
WATSONVILLE — What a difference a year makes.

Last year's heavy spring rains created slim pickings for strawberry growers in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties after the fields were awash in mud.

In all, only 2,000 9-pound trays were harvested in the Pajaro and Salinas valleys between January and April, a paltry amount compared to the nearly 700,000 trays picked so far this year, according to the California Strawberry Commission.

"The strawberry is weather-dependent," said Peggy Dillon, a spokeswoman for the commission. "April was a deluge. I don't think I remember a day where it didn't rain that month"

But now, a year later, there's no rain.

It's been full steam ahead for strawberry growers, especially on Riverside Drive on Wednesday, where dozens of fieldworkers were harvesting for Coastal Berry in Watsonville.

Whether the market will flood due to an abundance of supply remains to be seen because it's early in the season, but one thing is certain: The strawberry is the No. 1 cash crop in Santa Cruz County, and the trickle-down effect from the multimillion-dollar industry is unquestionable, said Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner Ken Corbishley.

In 2005, 78 growers in the county collected $128.6 million in gross receipts from strawberries, he said.
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In 2004, the same number of growers collected $194.7 million — the price per ton worth considerably more on the open market due to a shortage of supply.

All this occurred on just over 3,000 acres of land in the county.

"It creates side industries," Corbishley said, "like jobs for the truckers, the fieldworkers, the pesticide companies, the boxers, the shippers and those who maintain the equipment that's needed for the harvesting"

It also puts food on the tables for the thousands of Mexican farmworkers, who can make as much as $15 an hour, depending on how many boxes they pick.

Others have jobs cleaning up after the harvest is complete, where they cut the crop so that strawberries grow back — at roughly $8 an hour.

"When the season starts, we start working," said Benito Alvarez, 60, a Mexican from Michoacan who's been working in the Pajaro Valley fields since the early 1970s.

Gloria Chillon, director of marketing for Watsonville-based Driscoll's, a shipper and marketer that works with hundreds of independent family farms around the world, said the demand for strawberries increases each year.

If there are too many strawberries for the market to bear, it's a bad thing, she said.

"But luckily we're in a good position. More and more parents are giving them to their children to eat, and they're becoming the fruit of choice because they're healthy and they taste good"

Contact Tom Ragan at tragan@santacruzsentinel.com.

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