BY CALEB HAMPTON

 AgAlert

Packinghouses in California’s pear-growing districts are running at full tilt as growers box more of their fruit for the fresh market this year and ship less to canneries.

The pivot came after one of the state’s two pear canneries, with weakened demand and inventory bolstered by last year’s bumper crop, slashed its orders.

“Over the last year, we have seen a reset in consumer behavior and demand realigning with pre-COVID levels,” Rob Cubbage, vice president of operations at Del Monte Foods, said in a statement. “As a result, our pack plan for pears and across all crops is smaller than in prior years. We’ve been working closely with our growers to plan ahead.”

Pear growers said the Walnut Creek-based cannery approached them in the spring and asked the farmers to undershoot their contracted tonnage—some by as much as 45%.

“They wanted as little as possible,” said Ryan Elliot, operations manager at Stillwater Orchards in the Sacramento County town of Courtland.

For his family’s farm, which grows, packs and ships pears, that has meant packing around 40% of its crop for the fresh market—up from 30% to 35% in a typical year. The rest is going to Del Monte and to the Lodi-based cannery Pacific Coast Producers.

Others made the same adjustment.

“There were more growers who shipped to the fresh market this year than have done in the past,” said Alex Wilson, who grows pears for his family’s Rivermaid Trading Co., the state’s largest pear supplier.

Growers in the Sacramento River Delta, which produces most of California’s pears, began harvesting Bartletts—the state’s top variety—on July 15 and finished in early August.

Last week, growers in the delta were harvesting Boscs, a golden-brown variety with a harder skin typically sold on the fresh market. Shippers said farmers in Lake and Mendocino counties, California’s other pear-growing district, were preparing to transition this week from Bartletts to Boscs.

With the cannery wanting less tonnage, growers were spared an oversupply by a crop that has come in 20% to 30% lighter than last year, according to grower estimates and industry forecasts.

“The stars aligned,” Wilson said, referring to the balance between supply and demand.

Growers said lower yields in California’s two pear-growing regions were the result of poor fruit set.

“It was a really extended bloom,” lasting more than a month instead of the usual 10 days, said Christopher Chan, manager at his family’s Lincoln Chan Farms and Wallace Chan Farms in Courtland. “We had some warm weather in the spring that pushed it. Then it cooled off again quite a bit. The trees seemed like they were just confused.”

Meanwhile, record-low yields in the Pacific Northwest, which competes with California’s late-season pears, stabilized fresh-market prices even as a greater portion of the state’s crop was shipped to grocery stores and other fresh-market retailers.

Prices for California pears typically tail off in August as fruit from Washington and Oregon hits the market. As of last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service showed prices holding steady at around $1 per pound for Bartletts and around $1.35 per pound for Boscs.

“With the crop being down, the fresh price is up relative to last year,” Elliot said.

It didn’t hurt that most of his family’s fruit came off the trees with few blemishes, a prerequisite for selling on the fresh market. “We’re really happy with the quality,” Elliot said.

Some growers had more challenges. An April hailstorm damaged up to 200 acres of pears in the delta, Wilson said. Many growers also struggled to size their fruit.

“Having the split bloom, we had fruit that was really big up front,” Chan said, “but there was also a lot of really small fruit that just didn’t want to size due to a crazy heat spell we had in July.”

Chan sent 40% of his crop to the fresh market, he said, up from less than 30% in a typical year. He might have sold even more of it fresh had more of his fruit sized up, he said. In the end, he said he was fortunate “everything sized just enough to make it into the cannery-sized pool.”

Cannery prices this year and last year were tiered at $465 to $588 to $615 per ton, depending on size, with growers earning less this year due to harvesting smaller fruit.

“The pears are high quality this season,” said Cubbage of Del Monte. “However, we’re seeing smaller fruit size due to high heat.”

In California, pears are hand-picked by harvest crews and placed in bins that are hauled to packinghouses. The fruit is washed and then sorted by hand for quality and weighed for size, with the best and biggest pears packed for grocery stores and the rest shipped to canneries. A small fraction of the crop—fruit too small or bruised to can—is made into juice.

The state’s pear farmers, prioritizing flavor, have pledged not to use anti-ripening agents that extend the fruit’s shelf life but can prevent it from ever naturally ripening.

Last week, employees at Stillwater Orchards packed Boscs into boxes and bags and stacked them in cold-storage rooms before shipping the pears to retailers across North America. The company, which has grown pears along the Sacramento River since 1860, ships to all 50 U.S states, Mexico, Central America and Canada, selling to Costco, Sam’s Club, Walmart and other buyers.

During the past decade, California’s pear acreage has declined from 11,600 to 8,500, according to USDA, as growers removed trees due to shrinking markets and competition from imports.

“Pears are a really expensive crop to grow,” said Chan, who has seen his family’s acreage decline from 800 to 275 during the past 30 years. “You need the human touch for it.”

The hand labor required to prune, pick and pack pears has gotten more costly, Chan said, and some of the people with the skills to climb ladders and pluck fruit off high branches are aging out of the workforce.

“The ones who are sticking it out take pride in that work,” he said.

After a few years of strong demand driven by an increase in canned-fruit purchases during the pandemic, growers said the dramatic cut from the cannery this year was a bad sign.

“It’s a concern,” Elliot said. If a cannery asked growers to cut that amount of tonnage in a high-yielding year, he said, “we would probably have to leave fruit on the tree.”

While the fresh market has provided a lucrative outlet this season, “it’s a big risk,” Chan said. To survive from one year to the next, growers depend on the long-term contracts and relationships they have with canneries, which provide guaranteed sales and pricing.

“We need strong canneries,” Elliot said. “They are a stable home for our fruit.”

— Courtesy of the California Farm Bureau.