Apr 3, 2008

Cuyama Orchards Makes Startling First Impression

If we’d been coming to Cuyama Orchards from Bakersfield, the scenery – the hills, the oilfields – would have been spectacular but not daunting. But we were coming in the back way, and that was quite different.

We – about 100 members of the International Fruit Tree Association – were coming to visit Howard and Jean Albano and their son Byron to see their 260-acre organic apple orchard. We were on two large tour buses clearly not designed for the route we were taking.

We were driving north out of Los Angeles over the Transverse Mountains, so-called because they run east and west unlike all the other coastal and inland mountains ringing California’s Central Valley. While only about 5,000 feet tall, six to eight feet of snow graced the top. We crossed the San Andreas Fault and its eerie landscape created by shifts in the tectonic plates far below, and, unshaken, then began to descend.

The road was well paved but narrow with many tight switchbacks. The hills look unnatural, like piles of mine tailings. The brush had burned off one long range of hills last year, adding to its starkness. Some trees grew along the Cuyama River, which we followed down from its headwaters. But there were no crops, no fields, no homes – only scrub trees and the rubble hills. We passed a place where paint ball warriors worked out. If we’d had a few chickens on the bus, it could have been a scene from a Mexican movie.

Then suddenly, we turned left and drove across the river – not on a bridge but through the silty, running water in which the packed gravel bottom was presumed but not visible – and we were there.

Amazing! These bleak hills were our introduction to California, a state with a farmgate value of production of $45 billion, a state where Fresno and Tulare counties each have farm production valued at $4.5, each county as much as whole states like Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania. As we would later find, California agriculture is wall to wall in the Central Valley, but California is big and variable.

Like all California orchards, these at Cuyama Orchards were precisely hand-planted in checkrows of trellised trees, but here they added a surreal order to the chaotic landscape.

Howard and Jean found this place years ago and planted their first apples in 1993.

“When I was younger, I used to backpack in these hills,” Howard said, describing how he discovered the place. The farm abuts the Los Padres National Forest. It was an alfalfa farm when they bought it, and the Albanos still do a large business selling 500 acres of alfalfa and grain hay to affluent southern Californians who keep horses in this perfect-for-trail-riding place.

Unlike areas east, where wet conditions make growing organic apples very difficult, the desert conditions greatly reduce pressures from most insects and apple scab, and the major fight is against weeds. Interestingly, they do not grow their hay organically – something that would be easy to do in the East – because, Howard said, weed pressure is so intense that growing clean hay without herbicides would not be feasible.

In the orchards, the battle against weeds relies on flamers, mechanical cultivation and hand hoeing. The trickle irrigation lines are tied up just under the tree canopy to prevent them from being cut or burned.

“Weeds are a major problem in organic orchards, especially when they are young,” Howard said. “We have experimented with a variety of control methods, including hand hoeing, a weed burner, a weed badger and a weed eater. Tying our microjet sprinkler system to the lower trellis wire has made weed control cheaper and easier. The best ultimate control is a well-developed canopy.

“We have powdery mildew and fire blight, codling moth in small manageable numbers, woolly and rosy apple aphid controlled by beneficial insects, and mites controlled by natural predators and, at times, by predatory mites and beneficial thrips from a commercial insectary. We have very few leaf rollers and do not have scab or scale. Our isolation and lack of neighbors helps in dealing with insect problems.”

Codling moths are controlled using traps and mating disruption.

Cuyama Orchards is vertically integrated. It grows, packs and markets its apples to “small upscale chains” in California, Howard said. They grow standard Fuji, Pink Lady, Gala and several specialty and heirloom varieties.

They maintain a sales office in Los Angeles, which is 86 miles southeast, and a packing facility in Arvin, which is 20 miles south of Bakersfield and 58 miles from the farm. They do some specialty packing from a small line at the orchard. About half of the extra fancy apples are packed and marketed in returnable plastic or tri-wall bins weighing 625 to 825 pounds, and the rest are tray packed.

Just learning to grow apples in their area was a challenge, Howard said, and it wasn’t until 2000 that they switched to organic growing – and that was more as a result in the marketing challenges that were also difficult.

As Howard tells it, they began planting in 1993 on MM111 rootstock at a 10 x 18 spacing. “It has been and still is productive, usually yielding 60 to 74 900-pound bins per acre,” he said. “From that point we’ve progressed to more dwarfing rootstocks and tighter spacing. Every new planting for the last nine years has been on M9 rootstock at a 6 x 14 spacing. A portion of our most recent planting in 2007 is on a V-trellis at 3 x 14 or 1,036 trees per acre.”

The ranch is high and dry, about 3,100 feet elevation and variable rainfall. Some years they get 22 inches; last year they got 2. It snows occasionally, and spring frosts can be a problem until May 15. Bloom comes a month before. For frost control, they use microjet irrigation sprinklers set to deliver 40 gallons per minute per acre and wind machines at colder spots.

In a state known for regulations, Californians in the dry Central Valley can drill all the water wells they want – and they do. Because the Albanos are high up in their watershed, water is close to the surface, saturating the gravel-over-clay of the river valley to about 200 feet deep. Lower down the valley, the water is deeper, 500 feet and more.

“In 1997, world apple markets started to soften,” Howard said, just as their new orchards were coming into full production. In 1998, with a beautiful crop of Fuji, they earned only $12 a box for premium fruit and $7 for utility.

“After this experience, we decided to take control of our own direct market sales,” he said. “We developed our own label, and found that local markets in Los Angeles and San Francisco responded well to our product and valued us as a supplier despite the historically low prices all around.”

They began packing at the orchard and selling premium fruit in returnable plastic bins. “It’s cheaper than packing in boxes,” Byron said. He handles sales and marketing.

“The bin program is a very important part of our marketing program.”

Byron found that the organic label helped bring a better price, but his philosophy has an egalitarian side.

“Apples need a broad customer base,” he said. “They should sell for 99 cents on the retailer’s shelf. Three ninety-nine on the shelf, that’s not the best way. And the apple has to be a value. It’s got to eat right.”

He reports excellent feedback from customers, who find their apples flavorable. The varieties they sell have excellent appeal.

To get good value without gouging the consumer requires patience in marketing, he said. With Pink Lady, for example, the market has been small and steady, and metering the apples into the market works best.

“You have to be patient,” he said. “Cutting price doesn’t move them any faster.”

“We currently find that, as a vertically integrated operation, the connection we enjoy with our customers is critically important, Howard said. “It allows us to take a long-term outlook to our entire operation, and it assures us that the efforts we spend in the field will be rewarded in the marketplace.”

A few days later, Howard and Jean Albano were given a Grower of the Year Award from IFTA. Howard is a member of the board of directors of IFTA.