For decades, San Diego and its 18,000 acres of avocado trees has been the top avocado-producing county in the United States. Yet, due to amount of salt in the irrigation water going up by 20 percent, according to one expert, production there is suffering. Ventura County is now on the verge of overtaking San Diego, in part because water there is cheaper and not as salty.
As San Diego water officials have scrambled to assemble a drought-proof water supply, they’ve begun to rely more on water from the Colorado River. That water, it turns out, is quite salty. Salty water – even water that has been treated and is fit to drink – turns avocado leaves brown, curbs root growth and can even stop trees from producing fruit at all.
To get rid of the salt, farmers could apply extra water to the trees, hoping to push away the salt build-up. But the high cost of water in San Diego means that’s not much of an option for many.
This is perhaps the top complaint by San Diego farmers. Other California farmers have much cheaper water. Farmers in other parts of California have relied on groundwater, which costs only what it takes to drill a well and then pump water from it; or they can buy subsidized water from the Central Valley Project, the federal government’s canal and reservoir system.
Neither is an option for most farmers in San Diego: Groundwater is scarce, and the Central Valley Project ends around Bakersfield.
The price of water puts San Diego farmers at a disadvantage, at least when they are growing crops, like avocados, that are grown elsewhere.
In 2011, the University of California Agricultural Issues Center studied what it would take to plant a new 20-acre avocado grove in several counties. In San Diego, water costs were about four times higher than the cost of water in Ventura County, the second-largest avocado producing county.
To break even, a new avocado farmer in San Diego would need to bring in about $1.44 per pound. In Ventura, a farmer would be able to break even at just 88 cents per pound. Right now, non-organic avocados are selling for up to $1.36 a pound in mid-May. That price is up from earlier in the year, when Mexico flooded the market with avocados.
Source: Fresh Plaza