An Early Berry Season.

Weather, Tight Labor Pool Putting Squeeze on Farmers

CAMARILLO -- A light rain falls as a crew of about 40 men and women slog through the muddy furrows in a field here, pushing wheeled carts as they go.

Clad in raincoats, jackets, plastic trash bags - anything, really, to help keep out the rain - they rifle through leaves looking for berries. With a faint "snap," the workers twist the ripe fruit off the stems and pack it into cardboard boxes.

Wages start at $6 an hour and the job is physically demanding. But this crew, and hundreds like it, are the backbone of Ventura County's $175 million-a-year strawberry industry.

"A lot of people think the fruit comes-out of the back-room of Safeway," says farmer Mike Conroy, as he watches his crew move through the field. "But a lot of work and expense goes into growing strawberries."

Despite the rain, Conroy, the owner of Conroy Farms Inc., has three crews out today. He's farming 150 acres this season on three parcels of roughly equal size, located on either side of the Ventura (101) Freeway in the Oxnard plain.

Finding farm workers always has been tough, but the job is made more difficult by a booming economy that has increased demand for unskilled workers.

"We're competing with places like McDonald's," says Conroy. "We just lost a foreman. He went to Las Vegas to work in a casino starting at $10.50 an hour. It's tough to compete with that."

'The plants are confused'

Farmers usually would be just "scratching" their fields this time of the year (picking the first ripening fruit). But the unusually warm, dry weather this season has caused farmers like Cecil Martinez to shift into high gear.

"The plants are kind of confused," Martinez explained. "Normally we'd be getting 25 to 50 (12-pound) crates an acre this time of year, but now we're getting 100 crates to the acre," he said. "We're way ahead of schedule."

The early start to the season could mean a bumper crop for Ventura County growers, on top of what farmers say was their best year ever in 1999.

Strawberry prices tend to be higher early on in the season, and Ventura County farmers now have plenty of fruit to market in the state and throughout the country, said Dominique Jordan, a spokeswoman for the California Strawberry Commission.

"It definitely increases the window of opportunity," she said. "Strawberries have a big user base, especially on the winter-weary East Coast. This is an important time (for farmers in Southern California)."

About 20.5 million crates of strawberries were produced in the Oxnard plain in 1999, a 33 percent increase over 1998, according to the California Strawberry Commission. A crate has between 12 to 14 pounds of berries depending on the size of the fruit.

California produces 83 percent of the nation's strawberry crop. The Oxnard area is the No. 2 producer in the state after the Watsonville/Salinas area, which produced 43.7 million crates in 1999, said Jordan.

Like other farmers, Martinez said he's getting between $10 to $12 a flat (about a 12pound box). Later in the season, the same box would sell for closer to $7. But it's backbreaking work. Out in the field, the farm workers have split into two groups of 20 each. The two crews start on opposite sides of the beds of strawberries and work toward the center.

A delicate job

As fruit comes off the plants, the workers pack it directly into the green pint baskets that make their way to grocery store shelves. Once a 12-pound box is filled with pint baskets, it's hauled to the back of the picking trailer, where another worker-inspects the fruit and punches a sort of scorecard.

Although the field hands are being paid an hourly wage, they receive a bonus of 20 cents per box after the third box of strawberries they pick in an hour, explains Jon Rippee, the field supervisor.

Because it's early in the season, and fruit from all growers in the Watsonville/Salinas areas hasn't yet hit the market, Conroy Farms is getting a decent price of about $10 to $12 a box. As the season matures and Northern California berries hit the market, the price could drop to $7 a box or less, Rippee says.

At 53, Daniel Prado is one of the older workers out here today. Wearing yellow rain gear and sporting a baseball cap, Prado has been working U.S. fields for 12 years, long enough to qualify for the amnesty program to become a U.S. citizen.

Despite his citizenship, Prado returns to Mexico in the off-season to be with his family.

"Back in Mexico, you would earn about 40 pesos a day doing this kind of work. That's about $5," he says through an interpreter. "Here I can earn $400 a week (at the height of the season)."

If Prado is one of the oldest here today, Serfina, 18, is one of the youngest Back home in Mexico, Serfina has eight children -- the result of multiple births and getting married at a young age. Like the other women here, Serfina wears a hat on her head and a bandana over her face to keep out the sun. Over her sweatshirt, she wears a black plastic trash bag to ward off the rain.

The work, she explains, is "muy dificil" (very difficult). But the pay is good compared to wages back home. Her kids are staying with her mother-in-law as she and her husband work the fields to support their family.

'I want them in school'

Asked if she would like her own children to follow her path into California's strawberry fields, Serfina pauses for a moment before returning to the field.

"No," she says simply. "I want them to stay in school."

The United Farm Workers has been battling to unionize strawberry workers, starting with those employed by the state's largest strawberry grower, Watsonville-based Coastal Berry Co.

The four-year-long organizing effort culminated in an election in June in which Coastal Berry employees voted to be represented by their own group called the Coastal Berry of California Farm Workers Committee. The UFW has contested the election, claiming there were irregularities in the vote. A ruling on whether the election should be nullified is expected soon from a state Agricultural Labor Relations Board administrative law judge.

At Conroy Farms, meanwhile, the workers appear weary. They are not sure what to make of the reporter with the notebook. Asked if his field hands are here legally, Conroy explains it's nearly impossible to tell.

His company is required by law to check the legal status of all its workers, and does. But he concedes that Social Security cards and other documentation can easily be obtained on the street.

"I'd prefer that we go back to something like the Bracero program, (in which workers from Mexico were allowed easy access to the U.S. between 1942 and 1964 to work in the fields)," says Conroy. "(The government) has turned us into police."