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The guacamole crisis

Posted by: Maven on December 23, 2008 at 12:59 pm

From the San Diego Reader:

Throughout last winter and spring, one could put one’s ear to the wind almost anywhere in North [San Diego] County and hear the buzz of chainsaws as avocado farmers cut down their trees.

While this tropical fruit has beaten the odds in Southern California’s desert climate for decades, the local avocado industry has taken a turn for the worse. Orchards heavily damaged by drought, frost, and fire produced a 2008 crop just 57 percent of average, and the 2009 harvest is not expected to be much better, say industry eyeballers. The most recent hit taken by the county’s 23,000 acres of avocado farms was a 30 percent cutback on water allocation in January at the direction of U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, who ordered reduced pumping from the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to protect the threatened delta smelt. Judge Wanger’s action has in turn sparked a drastic, last-resort tactic of grove management called “stumping.” To ensure the survival of at least some of their trees, farmers began sawing down as much as 40 percent of their acreage after stripping the trees of fruit early in the year.

Stumping does not kill an avocado tree but merely leaves a dormant relic three to five feet tall. Lacking fruit, flowers, or foliage, such trees immediately cease guzzling water, allowing surrounding trees full access to the available supply. According to Guy Witney, director of industry affairs with the California Avocado Commission in Irvine, stumped trees will spring back to life and begin producing fruit again in two or three years.

“This is just a means of temporarily halting their use of resources,” said Witney. “The hope is to keep cutting them back until the water issue resolves.”

Read more from the San Diego Reader by clicking here.

December 23, 2008 · Filed Under Agriculture, San Diego

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