LAKE COUNTY — The Kelseyville “pearadox” comes in the form of an old, wooden sign proclaiming the town “Pear Capital of the World.” It was replaced in recent years with “Kelseyville?a friendly country town.” In the past, Kelseyville was the hub and Lake County was the mecca for pears.
Today, coinciding with a campaign to gain fair market value for the high-quality Lake County Bartlett pear is the destruction and abandonment of pear orchards as farmers finally say “to heck with this.”
Although piles of pulled-up pear trees smoldering in a burn pile are du jour, there is no lack of pride for the pear. There is the Kelseyville Pear Festival, a video store called “Pearadise” and the Lake County Fair”s mascot is “Barty” the Bartlett pear. Some residents may wonder then, what is the future of the Lake County pear, and why are they disappearing so quickly?
The answer, according to area farmers, the county agricultural commissioner and other authorities on the subject is three-fold: the high production costs, low market-value and increasing pest control problems have made the pear a less lucrative crop. The future for pears in the county is not bright.
“I think it was time for me to get out,” said longtime Kelseyville resident, plant pathologist and former pear farmer Broc Zoller, who coaches pear farmers on pesticide use in his business, The Pear Doctor, Inc. Zoller, is a former member of the California Pear Advisory Board. He is a researcher for the group and received an award for implementing pest control methods in Lake County.
“It was a combination of factors?a failure on the part of the federal government to address the issue of labor, the revenue is below production costs and problems with the pest control. What we spend on pesticides for one spray would have paid for a whole year of spraying 30 years ago, and the worth of pears has not gone up. Back then you”d get $125 per ton, now it”s $200.”
The industry was never a huge earner, Zoller said, although there was a golden age in the 1950s. “Pear decline came in the ?60s when a microplasm disease killed trees rapidly. In El Dorado County, they never got replanted. Lake County replanted, and the disease kept the production down so the prices stayed high through the ?60s,” Zoller said.
But the prices haven”t been good since the 1970s, other then two years from 1996 to 1997, when the north west pear crop froze out resulting in a higher demand for pears. “The decline is continuing, and it”s not over?you can no longer say you”ll have at least one good, profitable crop every six years.”
A coffin nail drove into Lake County”s pear industry with a shuddering force a year ago, when the company that spread pear slices out to dry in the sun decided to close its doors. “Lake County dried pears were preferred, but this year we have had no drying in Lake County. Mariani”s closed up its dry yard, because they couldn”t get enough people to operate the dry yard, and more dried pears were coming from Europe,” Zoller said.
With 20 percent of pears coming from abroad, when that number was traditionally less than 5 percent, there isn”t a reason for pear tonnage in Lake County. With this realization, farmers started pulling trees out when the pears were no longer profitable. But for some it”s like pulling teeth. “They have to lose enough money first before they make up their mind to do it,” Zoller said.
A big problem in pear farming right now, according to Zoller and Lake County Agricultural Commissioner Steve Hajik, stems from the difficult-to-control pear pests and the fact that abandoned orchards are rampant. These orchards, whether they are one, two, or more than 20 untended and unsprayed pears, harbor nasty pests that wreak havoc on neighboring orchards. As Ag Commissioner, Hajik is tasked with trying to get those farmers or property owners with abandoned trees to pull them out.
“It”s difficult because people say ?I love these trees, that”s why I moved here,” but the problem is they aren”t taking care of them,” Hajik said, adding that abandoned orchards in the county number about 200 acres.
In each of the five different pesticide categories, insecticides, miticides, fungicides, bacteriacides and herbicides, there are at least 10 different kinds of pesticides used by farmers.
The worst bug is the codling moth, which is destroyed by using pheromones that diminish the male bug”s ability to find the female bug and reproduce. But it only works when you keep the overall moth population down. “You can”t have a neighbor with abandoned trees where the moth is just allowed free reign. You can”t run the mating disruption technique and have a neighbor like that,” Zoller said.
An orchard sprayer is required because unlike a hand-held sprayer, the orchard sprayer blows the pesticides with a force necessary to coat the entire surface of each leaf.
Some people ask their neighbor to come over with an orchard blower, Hajik said, but it”s not legal for neighbors to do so. “They need a license to spray other orchards, and it”s illegal to do it without pay. And why would a neighbor spray your trees for free?”
Contact Elizabeth Wilson at ewilson@record-bee.com
