SCOTTS VALLEY — The pear picker shortage is now acute, according to local packing houses, which this year are contending with several problems common among pear harvesters.
What is uncommon this year is the combination of problems local farmers are facing — not just the labor shortage itself, but also a late harvesting season and increased competition for pickers from grape growers.
Rachel Elkins, the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) pomology farm advisor for Lake and Mendocino counties, said that Lake County represents a microcosm of the statewide farm labor situation.
Elkins explained that there is currently a general agricultural labor shortage, not only here in Lake County, but also in areas dependent on immigrant labor, such as Napa and Mendocino counties, and states including Washington and Oregon.
Why is there a labor shortage this year?
“It depends on who you talk to,” said Elkins. “Most of the crops were delayed in their development because of all the winter rain and everyone is now competing for the same labor force. Lake County depends on picking crews coming in from the Delta and they were also late in developing this year and had a protracted harvest period as well — kind of a domino effect, if you will.
“From what I understand the Valencia oranges were late and the pickers were not able to come up here because of that. Most sectors are feeling this tight labor situation.”
The need for labor is keeping local pears from getting to market, said Toni Scully of Scully Packing.
“This year”s crop has a beautiful finish, high sugar, a beautiful shape it has everything we want in a crop,” she explained. “These pears should be in boxes going all over the United States, Canada and Mexico.”
Instead, most of them are going to a dumping ground for packing house sort-outs.
“All of us are walking away from entire blocks that we can”t pick and it”s rotting,” said Scully.
And with a 40- to 50-percent crop loss, many farmers will have difficulty paying their crop loans.
“There is nothing wrong with these pears at all, except that they got too ripe,” Scully said.
Scully explained that she feels abandoned by the federal government. “Our seasonal labor force is now gone because they”ve closed the borders.”
Part of the problem, she said, is the demise of the Bracero program, in which more than 4 million Mexican farm laborers came to work the fields of this nation.
According to the Web site www.farmworkers.org, the U.S. and Mexican governments instituted the Bracero program in 1942. The Bracero Treaty allowed Mexican migrant workers to come into the United States to work on harvesting crops. The treaty ended in late 1963 but workers continued to come.
Scully stated she feels the federal government should have replaced the Bracero program in the 42 years since it has ended.
“We could have a win-win situation if we could devise a guest program or something similar,” she said.
Scully said the packing houses need experienced pickers who are accustomed to picking six to seven bins of about 1,000 pounds of pears each. Inexperienced pickers, said Scully, pick less than three bins per day, approximately half of the production they need during the narrow three-week window normally needed for the picking process.
Steve Winant, a local pear and walnut farmer, is facing at least a 30-percent loss of his pear crop and is considering getting out of the business.
“It doesn”t look very good at this point because of the labor the way it is,” stated Winant, indicating he may pull out his pear trees and plant more walnuts because walnuts can be more easily mechanically harvested.
Winant said walnut trees take approximately 10 years to bear fruit and when asked what he would do in the interim he said, “I”ll have to go and get a real job.”
“We feed the country, we feed the world,” said Scully.
She noted that her packing company had received calls from approximately 10 to 12 people willing to help during this critical time.
On Wednesday Scully said she had four people come to her office and she put all of them them to work.
However, with the fruit ripening before someone can pick it from the trees, tons of pears are ending up in piles on the ground, uneaten and wasted.
Contact Cynthia Davis at cdavis@record-bee.com.
