There are some problems that we all share it seems.


From left, Gary Branstetter, Redlands Citrus Preservation Commission
chairman; Manuel Martinez, Redlands Foothill Grove general manager;
Todd Housley, Redlands groves manager; and John Gardner, San
Bernardino County agricultural commissioner/sealer, gather near where
citrus trees have been planted.

http://www.pe.com/localnews/sbcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_S_nredgrove15.4326d7d.html

Redlands casts eye on keeping enough of its citrus heritage to be money-making venture

10:00 PM PST on Wednesday, January 14, 2009

By MICHAEL PERRAULT
The Press-Enterprise

REDLANDS - City leaders are studying how to preserve Redlands' orange-growing heritage as more orange groves are sold off or left to fade away.

A century ago, 30 packinghouses in the East Valley produced more than a million crates of oranges annually that were shipped out on some 9,000 railroad cars.

Today, Redlands has a single packinghouse -- Redlands Foothill Groves -- that handles most oranges produced by growers in Redlands, Mentone and the surrounding area.

City officials are analyzing how enough citrus acreage can be maintained to support that packinghouse and keep the industry intact. Should the packinghouse one day shut down, Redlands would have to ship fruit to one of just a handful of remaining packinghouses, boosting the city's operation costs and making it tougher to turn a profit on citrus, city officials said.

"The concern is down the road, as the baby boomers and their kids who inherit this citrus land decide they don't want to be farmers, they may want to sell it at a profit to developers," said Todd Housley, Redlands' grove manager.

The city has become the largest single grower in Redlands, with 16 groves encompassing nearly 210 acres of city property, said Gary van Dorst, director of Redlands' Quality of Life Division.

But about 1,300 acres are needed to keep a packinghouse viable, said Mayor Jon Harrison.

With citrus acreage steadily dwindling, the Redlands City Council is assessing how enough can be preserved to maintain a thriving industry. Council members don't see any way the city can purchase another 1,100 acres, so they eventually may ask residents how much should be invested to keep the groves.

"I don't see any way to get to 1,300 acres," said Councilman Jerry Bean. "They don't make very good recreational parks. People don't play among the orange trees very well."

Yet Bean and other council members support maintaining the city's existing orange groves, which have eked out a small profit in recent years.

One of the difficulties Redlands faces is not having enough funds to purchase and preserve the groves, said economist John Husing.

"One suggestion has been to sell land owned by the city adjacent to its landfill to an industrial developer and use the proceeds to buy the groves needed to complete this preservation effort," Husing said.

Julian Carrillo, field manager for Redlands Foothill Groves, estimates that the packinghouse serves area growers with a combined 2,500 acres. Most own 10 acres or less. Few have 30 or more acres, Carrillo said.

Already, the packinghouse must look outside Redlands, Mentone and the surrounding area for enough citrus to keep busy.

"I'd say maybe 50 percent of our intake of summer fruit comes out of Hemet and lower San Diego County," Carrillo said. "At the same time, we're getting quite a volume of fruit coming in from the Central Valley."

Redlands Foothill Groves likely will be all right for at least a decade, Carrillo said. But an economic turnaround eventually could make developers eager to purchase orange grove acreage, and the packinghouse's survival would be in jeopardy.

Not only must there be enough growers to support a packinghouse, but also to occupy picking crews, pest control companies, entomologists and others, said Redlands resident Bill Cunningham, who has farmed about 15 acres of citrus over the past three decades.

Redlands must decide a long-term direction with its citrus preservation strategy, Husing said.

He recommends as part of an economic development strategy that Redlands inventory all groves in the city, determine which it might want to preserve and the costs.

"To determine the true public commitment to preserving the orange heritage of Redlands, the city should develop a payment strategy that will fund the purchase of groves and put it to a vote of the people," Husing said.

Reach Michael Perrault at 951-368-9474 or mperrault@PE.com

Thank you for posting this. I'm a Citrus Forum newbie (this is my first post) who lives near Redlands. I know how important preserving the citrus groves is to the city of Redlands and to all of us who live in the Inland Empire.

For years, we've watched citrus groves and vineyards being lost to developers, and it's really a heartbreaking thing. And now with the housing boom gone bust, they can't even sell the houses in the new develpments!

It's good to know the city-owned groves have turned a small profit in recent years, though. That's the best incentive there is towards preservation.

--Linda aka Raksha

Looking on Goggle Earth, many of the Redlands groves, are surrounded by development. Citrus groves, offerer a greater quality of life to the area than does more people moving into Southern California. Here in the area of Colorado where I live, to limit the number of people, the minimum amount of land that is allowed to build a house on is 40 acres. This law works well. - Millet

Hi Millet,

Well, that's been the pattern in SoCal until very recently: More and more farmland being lost to development every year as more and more people moved here and the property values kept going up. The same Mediterranean climate that makes SoCal ideal for citrus also makes it a very desirable place to live, after all.

But now with the recent economic downturn, the pattern appears to be reversing itself. People are actually moving OUT of California because it's so much less expensive to live elsewhere. Housing prices have come down, but not nearly enough considering how hard-hit everyone is. The Inland Empire where I live is now the foreclosure capital of California.

I agree that citrus groves make for a better quality of life than more people and more McMansions. There's no reason they have to take out ALL the trees when they put in a new development, though. In Pomona where I used to live, I've seen funky trailer parks built in old orange groves (usually Valencias) where they left most of the trees. They were much nicer than those same funky trailer parks would have been without the orange trees.

I like the idea of allowing no less than 40 acres of land to build a house, but it's...umm, just a little bit late to try something like that around here!

Millet and everyone,

One way that Redlands and the surrounding communities are working to preserve our citrus heritage is through the Inland Orange Conservancy, a kind of specialized CSA. I'm not a member, but it's only because I can't afford the membership (yet). I think it's a wonderful idea. Here's a link that explains it...

http://www.inlandorange.org/

Very interesting organization. I did'n find how much it costs to join.
I don't want to join just to understand how it works.

Sylvain,

The IOC website is a new one and doesn't appear to be complete yet. The most complete information I have been able to find is actually on the Slow Food "Ark of Taste" website.

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/ark_product_detail/inland_empire_old_grove_orange/

Quote:

In order to save the remaining groves, the IOC initiated a membership program to bypass the global market and get the fruit directly to local people so that the growers keep more profit. The orange harvest time is divided into three 14-week seasons. For $65 dollars per season members receive 10 pounds of oranges per week during their selected seasons. The oranges are delivered to various pickup locations by volunteers.

So that works out to a little more than $4.64 per week for 10 pounds of the best oranges in the world. It's my understanding from members and from their old website that it isn't just oranges. They also have grapefruits and lemons and avocadoes as part of the shares too.

Anything that doesn't get picked up on any given week (or if the member so designates) gets donated to local food banks.