From the Fields

Ernie Righetti
San Luis Obispo County

The heat spell in April of this year just knocked the devil out of the avocado crop, from one end of the state to the other. We think we'll probably have maybe a 10 percent crop next summer. We had a very heavy bloom, but the heat spell came at just the wrong time. It was 110 degrees here, and we almost never get 100 degrees.

We have suffered damage from the Mexican pests that came in--the persea mite and the scarlett thrip, but this year that hot spell seemed to have knocked them out. We didn't spray this year and this is the first time since this program started that we didn't have to spray for the thrip, which helps. So that is behind us.

Right now, the trees are in good shape. We just finished our Hass avocado harvest. It was a small crop also.

The nice thing about the situation with the avocado sector is we have spent enough money in the past years through the Avocado Commission's assessment to all of the growers in California, that we've raised the per-capita consumption of avocados to the point where we're consuming twice as much fruit with the Mexican and Chilean fruit coming in. The grower price has remained about the same.

Of course our costs are going up all of the time. It is not going to be any easier with this credit crunch. That is going to make it a little bit tougher on people who owe money to be able to meet the demands of their debt.

The weather has been good to us except for that heat spell. We are looking for a light crop next year, but there's always the hope that with the trees laying off for two years basically that the following year might be a really good one and that is what we're hoping for.

With the grapes, we had a little rain recently. It didn't hurt anything because we had some wind and that takes the moisture out of the mature grape clusters so they won't get mold.