Flood’s impact on California strawberries as yet unknown
As river water gushed through a broken levee, thousands of people in a California farming town were forced to evacuate as their homes were flooded and businesses destroyed.
Yet another potential casualty of the powerful rainstorms that drenched coastal California: hundreds of acres of fresh strawberries slated for America’s supermarkets this summer.
Industry experts estimate about a fifth of strawberry farms in the Watsonville and Salinas areas have been flooded since the levee ruptured March 10 about 70 miles south of San Francisco and another river overflowed. It’s too soon to know whether the berry plants can recover, but the longer they remain underwater, the more challenging it can get, said Jeff Cardinale, a spokesperson for the California Strawberry Commission.
“When the water recedes, what does the field look like — if it is even a field anymore?” Cardinale said. “It could just be a muddy mess where there is nothing left.”
For years, California’s farmers have been plagued by drought and battles over water as key sources have run dry. But so far this winter, the nation’s most populous state — and a key source of food for the nation — has been battered by 11 atmospheric rivers as well as powerful storms fueled by arctic air.
Many communities have been coping with intense rainstorms and flooding, including the unincorporated community of Pajaro, known for its strawberry crop. The nearby Pajaro River swelled with runoff from last week’s rains and the levee ruptured, forcing the evacuation of more than 8,000 people from the largely Latino farmworker community.
The vast majority of U.S.grown strawberries come from California, with farms in different regions of the state harvesting the berries at distinct times of the year. About a third of the state’s strawberry acreage is in the Watsonville and Salinas areas, according to the commission.
Other crops are also affected by the deluge in the Pajaro Valley, such as lettuce and other greens. Some vegetables had already been planted, and others might see delays in planting due to the storms, said Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau.
Monterey County is home to Pajaro and the crop-rich Salinas Valley, and has more than 360,000 farmed acres, said Juan Hidalgo, the county’s agricultural commissioner.
The county estimates the farm sector was hit by $324 million in losses from January storms, and strawberries, raspberries and greens will likely be affected by this one, he said.
But, he added, many acres of farmland won’t be, and consumers may not feel the impact of the storms. “We’re still going to have a lot of production,” he said.
But Soren Bjorn, president of Driscoll’s of the Americas, said that at the peak of summer, most of the strawberries in the country come from this region.
“It’s too soon to know the full impact of this,” he said. “There is no way we are going to get what we had planned for.”