BY CHRISTINE SOUZA

 AgAlert

California clingstone peach growers are working to harvest the season’s crop before high temperatures lead to overripe fruit and bruising, which would impact their bottom line.

Trying to beat a prolonged heat wave, Merced County farmer Mark Cederlind said he started crews at daybreak last week to pick his extra-early Carson variety, which is among dozens of clings planted to ripen throughout the season for the canning and frozen markets.

“We’re running from 5:30 a.m. to about 11:30 a.m. to keep conditions cooler for employees,” Cederlind said of crews that picked fruit at his farm in Winton, where he grows about 250 acres of cling peaches sold to Pacific Coast Producers and Del Monte.

Cederlind also grows 140 acres of freestone peaches for Wawona Frozen Foods and has diversified his business with almonds and winegrapes.

With no break from triple-digit temperatures in the Central Valley in the weeks leading up to harvest, Cederlind said he is concerned about the fruit “because it has just baked in that hot sun.” He added that crews are picking peaches before the fruit overripens and drops, which reduces yield and affects his profit margin.

“Even though it’s a better peach crop this year, our price per ton to produce it went up substantially,” Cederlind said. “We’re desperate to get more tons to the acre to offset those costs, so the heat is just another thing that is working against us.”

In a typical year with more moderate temperatures, Cederlind said harvest requires one or two passes through the orchard. This year, he said, “We’ve already had two to three picks on some blocks, so the price of the bin has increased.”

“Our picking costs have gone up almost 40% to 50%,” he said, adding that the cost to thin the peach orchard this season was between $1,800 and $2,500 per acre compared to $1,000 to $1,500 an acre four years ago.

Labor accounts for nearly 70% of direct costs for cling peach growers and continues to increase, according to the California Canning Peach Association. Another expense this year, Cederlind said, is treatment for a higher pressure of the peach twig borer, a top pest of peaches.

California cling peach growers are expected to produce 242,074 tons of peaches for canned and frozen fruit markets this year, up 10% from 2023, according to a June preseason estimate by the California League of Food Processors. The 2024 contract price to growers from processors is $635 per ton, the same price as last year, according to the California Canning Peach Association.

“We had favorable growing conditions up until the heat waves,” said Rich Hudgins, the association’s president and CEO.

With only 15% of the state’s cling peach crop harvested, he said it is too early to know whether growers will produce the estimated tonnage announced in June. If growers hit the estimate, Hudgins said, “We would have our best yield since 2016 of 17.8 tons per acre.”

Ranjit Davit of Live Oak, who farms peaches, almonds and walnuts, said cling harvest began July 10 in the growing region of Yuba and Sutter counties. Growers finished harvesting the extra-early varieties last week and moved to the mid-season clings. High temperatures meant that varieties such as Carsons and Loadels “really took a beating,” Davit said.

“We weren’t expecting this type of heat,” said Davit, who serves as board chairman of the California Canning Peach Association. “Growers have rejects due to bruised and overripe fruit caused by the heat, so it was a tough start on those particular extra-early varieties.”

One orchard of his extra-early peaches didn’t set, Davit said, which he attributed to not having adequate chilling hours for the trees to produce flowers and fruit. His region received about 780 chill hours, which is much less than the 900-1,200 chill hours needed to set the crop, he said.

“I have a 20-acre block that I completely lost; there was no set,” Davit said. “We should have picked 800 to 900 bins, and we picked 57 bins.”

With temperatures dropping to the 90s this week, Davit said he is thankful for slightly cooler conditions as he begins harvest of mid-season varieties Kingsburg and Kader. “It will definitely provide relief,” he said.

The mid-season varieties appear to be doing much better than extra-early clings, he said, adding, “We’re seeing much better grades and better firmness on the peach.”

Hudgins said the state’s cling peach is being challenged by less expensive imports from countries such as China, Greece and Chile.

“About a third of the total domestic consumption today is coming from imported products, primarily China. However, in the last year, Greece has become a bigger player,” Hudgins said. California’s canned peach sector has “virtually no export footprint” and sends only a small number of cases to Mexico and Canada, he noted.

As the price drops for California-grown commodities such as walnuts and almonds, Hudgins said he is concerned about growers looking to cling peaches as a way to diversify their crop portfolios.

“What I continue to be concerned about is the risk that we are going to overshoot underlying market demand with new plantings,” Hudgins said. “Over the last several years, processors have been contracting with growers for some additional cling peach plantings.”

The call by processors for more cling peach plantings a few years ago was driven by increased demand for canned and frozen peaches during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the sector saw a 20-year record of retail sales volume as people purchased shelf-stable items, Hudgins said.

Retail sales have returned to where they were before the pandemic, Hudgins said, adding, “It remains to be seen how the new plantings already in the ground are going to align with future consumer demand.”

“We’re trying to maintain the relative equilibrium, so we don’t find ourselves back in an oversupply position in the peach industry,” he said. “We’ve cautioned peach growers for some time not to plant a new orchard unless they have a firm contractual commitment from a processor to take the fruit.”

For those without experience farming cling peaches, he said, “Be careful about leaping from the frying pan into the fire.”

Harvest of cling peaches, which are grown from Yuba County in the north to Fresno County in the south, is expected to continue through mid-September.

— Courtesy of the California Farm Bureau.