Winds cause anxiety for local avocado grower

Santa Ana winds have long been the cause of headaches for avocado growers, and the winds experienced in Southern California the first week of December – which also caused public safety power shutoffs in Fallbrook and elsewhere – were no different.

One De Luz grower said the winds knocked a significant chunk of the fruit off her trees.

"I have quite a few trees that have no fruit on them at all," the grower said. "I wouldn't say half my grove has no fruit but there are probably 10%, 20% with no fruit on them, and then the trees that do have fruit, don't have much."

The grower said the damage caused by the winds will certainly impact the amount of avocados she is able to pick and sell, which is a process that her grove usually starts in January or February and continues through the summer.

"We have approximately 300 trees and we actually have what would be considered a really good, productive grove, so we might get 50 bins (of avocados) in a really good year," the grower said. "I think this year, we're probably looking at 10-15 bins."

That will make it difficult to make money, especially with what she described as increased water costs, plus the looming impact of lowered demand for avocados with restaurants that may not reopen as a result of the pandemic.

"We can break even depending on what our water costs are," she said. "A few years ago we could break even at $1 to $1.10 a pound. Now water costs have gone up significantly so that probably wouldn't hold true."

And prices per pound were already trending toward the dollar range for the 2020 harvest, the grower said, down from a year before, when they were closer to $2 per pound.

Wind damage to avocado groves is not a new phenomenon – it does happen periodically, depending on the severity of the winds, which typically peak in October but can occur throughout the year.

"Typically, some groves get hit very hard, some hardly at all," said Charley Wolk, owner of Bejoca Grove and Landscape Management.

Indeed, wind-damaged avocado groves have made headlines plenty of times over the years.

In 2017, a bad wildfire year for California, there were reports of downed fruit in many Southern California groves as a result of the winds, which also often fan wildfire flames. In 2007, another especially bad fire year, expected damage to avocado groves proved to be less severe than expected but, in 2003, yet another noteworthy fire year, winds caused more between $10 to $15 million in damage to Southern California avocado groves, news reports from the time indicate.

"When we get the Santa Ana winds, depending on their velocity, it can be very damaging, especially orchards that face to the northeast because that's where the Santa Ana winds come from," Wolk said.

Will Fritz can be reached by email at [email protected].