Avocados Continued from Page 1
“If we don’t get normal to above-av- erage rainfall for multiple years in a row, we’re in trouble,” Pidduck said. Two years ago, he noted, his farm reg- istered only 4 to 5 inches of rain for the entire winter. “You can’t survive on that,” Pidduck said. “At least this last winter we were up. I think I was around 14 inches or so, which was much better than 4, but I need some of those winters where we tap into those atmospheric rivers and really start to replenish our groundwater and our local reservoirs.” Besides, Pidduck noted, sprinklers can’t really replace Mother Nature for nourishing avocados on the tree. “When we’re putting on irrigation wa- ter, we’re also putting on salts,” Pidduck said. “That’s just the nature of irrigation water for the most part.” Winter rains, he added, are “very pure water. They flush those salts out of the soil in the fall and the winter.” Without those rains, he said, the year begins with higher salt levels, and “the av- ocados’ root system has to compete with the salts to get nutrients and whatever else it needs.” The early outlook for 2023 calls for about the same crop size as this year, Aymami said; the commission will meet in December to develop a firmer number. Avocados tend to be an alternate-bear- ing crop—the fruit takes the better part of
two years to develop from blossoming to harvest—but how much of a factor this is varies widely. “The one thing we are hearing from the field is that not all growers in one area are having an ‘on’ crop or an ‘off’ crop,” Aymami said. “Years and years ago, you’d see a whole county was on or off, and in recent years, we’ve really seen that it is grove by grove, grower by grower—some- times it’s even block by block.” Pidduck thinks his 2023 crop will be off. “I don’t think the weather really coop- erated during bloom for us this year,” he said. “It may have been too cool during the peak bloom times.” He brings in bees to help pollinate his crop during peak bloom time in spring, but how much work they do depends on the tempera- ture, he noted. “If you have a lot of cool, foggy days, you don’t have a lot of bee activity, and you don’t see the fruit set like you would in a warmer spring,” Pidduck said. All of that makes formulating a crop es- timate a dicey proposition, Aymami said. “It’s just real spotty,” she said. “It makes crop estimating a bit challenging when you’ve got 3,000 growers and you’re trying to figure out what’s on the tree, and what that translates to industrywide.” (Kevin Hecteman is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at khecteman@cfbf.com.)
checking with farmers throughout av- ocado country—mainly the coast from San Luis Obispo to San Diego counties— about a week after the heat wave dissi- pates, as this is when trees will start drop- ping fruit if they’re going to. After that, she added, “you wait another month to see if the fruit continues to grow, or if the heat did so much damage that maybe it didn’t drop the fruit yet, but it’s not growing.” Avocados prefer moderate climates with growing temperatures of less than 90 degrees, said Gabe Filipe, senior di- rector of California sourcing and farming at Mission Produce. Trees are more likely to be stressed when the thermometer hits triple digits. To deal with the heat, along with the drought and the rising cost of inputs, av- ocado farmers are investing in technology that measures actual tree demand. “By using a combination of remote weather stations, soil moisture probes and plant stress monitoring devices, growers can make educated cultural de- cisions,” Filipe said. “Automated pumping systems allow growers to deliver precise amounts of irrigation water to the trees, which helps maximize water resources.” Ventura County is the state’s largest avocado producer, with 19,852 acres in production, according to a 2021 LandIQ survey prepared for the Avocado Commission. Farmers in the county de- pend on groundwater and local reservoirs.
resilient in the face of the U.S. inflation- ary environment. “This demonstrates the strength of the category and continued establishment of the avocado as a household staple,” Anazawa said. “This also speaks to broad- er health and wellness trends underpin- ning the popularity of avocados.” Pidduck is among the farmers who jumped on the early-season market opportunity. “We went in and we just stripped the crop off the trees when the price was high enough that it warranted it,” he said. “Then we didn’t have to worry about a heat wave in July potentially drop- ping a crop on the ground.” He and others, however, did worry about another heat wave—the record-setting hot spell that baked most of the state last week. Pidduck said temperatures reached 107 to 108 degrees in his neighborhood, with some reports of 112 degrees. “A lot of the new-leaf growth on the av- ocado trees is just burnt,” Pidduck said. “I mean, just crispy and brown or black.” Fruit drop is likely, as a heat-stressed tree “just lets go of what it doesn’t need to sup- port,” he added. “We’ve been putting on water where we can put on water, but when it gets so hot, there’s only so much you can do,” Pidduck said. Aymami said the commission will start
EXHIBIT AT CALIFORNIA MARKET PLACE
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September 14, 2022 Ag Alert 13
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