From the Fields - Zack Stuller

By Zack Stuller, Tulare County farmer 

We are in the middle of plum harvest, which is about two weeks later than normal. The plum price is good, but demand is slow. The problem is we have a big volume but not a lot of demand.

For citrus, such as mandarins, lemons and navels, it was a really late year because of rains and cool weather. Everything is harvested with the exception of Valencias. For citrus, we don’t have a formal crop estimate. It is still early, but the crop definitely looks lighter than last year. In mid-May we did pesticide applications for citrus thrip. Typically, we do one or two applications per year, but this year we did four or five. It seems the efficacy of materials we were spraying wasn’t really good. It is just a tough bug year; it’s just back to back to back.

Having enough water is a good thing. We’re having to remember how to deal with it because we start running water down some ditch systems and find leaks. That has proven to be a little bit of a challenge but not something we can’t manage. We’ve been doing a lot of groundwater recharge.

For labor, we have not had problem finding workers to harvest, prune or thin this year. We’ve been pretty fortunate, but having to pay overtime is very expensive and is starting to really affect us.

As a custom applicator, we are busy applying materials for a lot of different growers. I have to recoup my costs, but because I have to pay four hours of overtime a day, my profitability is severely decreased, and I have to pass that cost onto the grower. We are just going to need to figure out how to farm more efficiently. One possibility would be automated sprayers. They have them on bigger blocks on the west side. It is doable, but we just need to let the technology progress a little further.