Pajaro berry farmers fear massive losses in flood

Like so many in the fertile Pajaro Valley where livelihoods are linked to the rhythms of the growing season, Fabiola Alcaraz is anxiously eyeing the calendar as fields and equipment that deliver a bounty of beautiful red strawberries and raspberries sit under several feet of muddy floodwater.

She manages a cold storage unit in Pajaro that keeps the freshly picked berries cool as they await shipment to grocers throughout the Bay Area and beyond. But a breach longer than a football field that severed a levee upstream during Saturday rainstorms spilled floodwater through the town and into the nearby farms.

Within weeks, strawberries will be coming in from other farms along the coast that were spared the brunt of the storm's wrath.

“We need to get back as soon as possible,” Alcaraz said. “We grow strawberries half a mile north and south of Pajaro, and need to be ready for the strawberry season.”

Berries and lettuce are the sixth and eighth most valuable crops in California, the top-valued U.S. producer of agriculture, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Agriculture is a $4.1 billion industry in Monterey County, the fourth most valuable producer in the state, known mostly for its lettuce, strawberries, broccoli and grapes.

Much of that harvest is produced in the Salinas River valley, but a significant portion comes from the Pajaro Valley, divided between Santa Cruz County along the north bank and Monterey County along the south.

The flood has come at a crucial time for the valley's growers.

Strawberries and raspberries, planted in the fall, typically produce their first crops in March and April. Lettuce and broccoli grow on 60- to 80-day crop cycles, said Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner Juan Hidalgo.

For the berry crops, the season has been delayed by the rainy weather, and the plants haven't yet begun to flower and produce fruit, Hidalgo said. That's potentially good news — if the floodwaters recede soon, plants that weren't washed away might recover and produce fruit.

“Plants can be quite hardy and they can recover,” Hidalgo said. “We don't expect those plants to begin to flower or produce fruit until maybe middle of April. But if they stay underwater for too many days, it's definitely going to have some very severe impacts to those growers.”

But that “assumes there is something still in the ground,” to recover, Hidalgo said.