California peach growers are working to harvest the season’s crop before high temperatures cause overripe fruit and bruising, which would negatively impact their bottom line.
To avoid a prolonged heat wave, Merced County farmer Mark Cederlind began harvesting his extra-early Carson variety at dawn last week, one of dozens of vines that will mature over the course of the season for the canning and frozen food markets.
“We work from 5:30 a.m. to about 11:30 a.m. to keep the temperatures down for the employees,” Cederlind said of the workers harvesting fruit on his farm in Winton. He grows peaches on about 250 acres, which he sells to Pacific Coast Producers and Del Monte.
Cederlind also grows 140 acres of freestone peaches for Wawona Frozen Foods and has expanded his business to include almonds and grapes.
With no respite from triple-digit temperatures in the Central Valley in the weeks leading up to harvest, Cederlind said he was worried about the fruit “because it was baked in the hot sun.” He added that pickers are harvesting the peaches before the fruit becomes overripe and falls off, reducing yields and hurting his profit margin.
“Even though we have a better peach crop this year, our price per ton has increased significantly,” Cederlind said. “We really want to harvest more tonnes per hectare to offset those costs, and the heat is another factor working against us.”
In a typical year with more moderate temperatures, Cederlind said, one or two passes through the orchard are needed to harvest. This year, he said, “we’ve already had two or three harvests in some blocks, so the price of the container has gone up.”
“Our harvest costs have increased by almost 40 to 50 percent,” he said, adding that the cost of thinning the peach orchard this season was between $1,800 and $2,500 per acre, compared to $1,000 to $1,500 per acre four years ago.
According to the California Canning Peach Association, labor costs account for nearly 70% of direct costs for peach growers and continue to rise. Another cost this year, according to Cederlind, is treating for increased pressure from the peach twig borer, one of the biggest peach pests.
California peach growers are expected to produce 242,074 tons of peaches for the canned and frozen fruit market this year, up 10% from 2023, according to a June preseason estimate from the California League of Food Processors. The contract price to growers from processors for 2024 is $635 per ton, the same price as last year, according to the California Canning Peach Association.
“We had favorable growing conditions until the heat wave,” said Rich Hudgins, the association’s president and CEO.
With only 15% of the state’s peach crop harvested, it’s too early to know if growers will produce the estimated amount announced in June. If growers meet the estimate, Hudgins said, “we would have our best yield since 2016 at 17.8 tons per acre.”
Ranjit Davit of Live Oak, who grows peaches, almonds and walnuts, said harvesting of the fresh-fruit varieties began July 10 in the Yuba and Sutter counties growing areas. Growers finished harvesting the extra-early varieties last week and moved on to the mid-season fresh-fruit varieties. The high temperatures meant varieties like Carsons and Loadels “really took a hit,” Davit said.
“We weren’t expecting this heat,” said Davit, chairman of the board of the California Canning Peach Association. “Growers are losing fruit because of heat-bruised and overripe fruit, so it’s been a tough start for these early-harvesting varieties.”
One orchard of his extra-early peaches has failed to set, Davit said, which he attributed to the trees not having enough chill hours to produce blossoms and fruit. His region has had about 780 chill hours, which is much less than the 900-1,200 chill hours needed for crops to set, he said.
“I have a 20-hectare block that I completely lost; there was no set,” Davit said. “We should have selected 800 to 900 bins and we selected 57 bins.”
With temperatures dropping into the 30s this week, Davit is grateful for the slightly cooler temperatures as he begins harvesting the mid-early Kingsburg and Kader varieties. “It will definitely provide some relief,” he said.
The mid-early varieties seem to be doing much better than the extra early ripening varieties, he said, adding: “We are seeing much better qualities and better firmness of the peaches.”
Hudgins said peach farming in the state is hampered by cheaper imports from countries such as China, Greece and Chile.
“About a third of all domestic consumption is now covered by imported products, mainly from China. However, in the last year, Greece has become a bigger player,” Hudgins said. The California peach canning sector has “virtually no export footprint” and sends only a small number of cases to Mexico and Canada, he noted.
With prices for California-grown products such as walnuts and almonds falling, Hudgins expressed concern that growers are trying to diversify their crop portfolio by growing peaches.
“What continues to worry me is the risk that we will outstrip underlying market demand with new plantings,” Hudgins said. “In recent years, processors have contracted with growers for additional plantings of peaches.”
Processors’ calls for more fresh peach acreage a few years ago were prompted by increased demand for canned and frozen peaches during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the sector was seeing 20-year record retail volumes as people bought shelf-stable products, Hudgins said.
Retail sales are back to pre-pandemic levels, Hudgins said, adding: “It remains to be seen how new plantings already in the ground will match future consumer demand.”
“We’re trying to maintain relative balance so that we don’t get back into an oversupply situation in the peach industry,” he said. “We’ve been warning peach growers for some time now not to start a new orchard unless they have a firm contractual commitment from a processor to take the fruit.”
For those who have no experience growing fresh peaches, he advises: “Be careful not to jump from the frying pan into the fire.”
Harvesting of fresh peaches, grown from Yuba County in the north to Fresno County in the south, is expected to continue through mid-September.
(Christine Souza is Ag Alert’s deputy editor. She can be contacted at [email protected].)
