Impact of Wildfires on California Avocados

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Wildfire risk remains a persistent threat for California avocado producers, and this year proved no exception. Chris Sayer of Petty Ranch says that Southern California fires last fall, which impacted a significant portion of the state’s avocado acreage, caused immediate crop losses. But, the long-term effects on the market are still up in the air.

Sayer… “Because when you've got 30 up to 80-mile-an-hour winds and single-digit humidities, if something starts, it's gonna get going. There are about 50,000 acres of avocados in the state of California, and there are about 4,000 acres of avocados that were within the footprint of the mountain fire burn area. And I know, you know, some of those are orchards that were completely destroyed. Some of them it just blew through very quickly as a flash fire and did varying levels of damage. So they lost a lot of crop for this season, but the trees may bounce back. And then there's orchards that are in between. They're ones that are right in the middle of it, but were spared. So, like I said, that's 8% of California's acreage was impacted, but we don't really know what that looks like, you know, come harvest time, and we probably won't really fully know until, you know, this summer when all of the fruit’s finished.”

Although the trees cannot be insured, there is crop protection insurance to help, Sayer notes.