CROPS—With land to spare, new markets and increasing demand, Antelope Valley farms are expanding

For some years now, the Antelope Valley has been trying to lure business to the region. The bad news is, those efforts have met with only limited success. That is also the good news. Without a rash of developers driving up land prices, and little construction of housing or commercial properties to encroach on the area’s open space, farmers have been able to expand their operations dramatically. So while crop production overall decreased in Los Angeles County in 1999, the Antelope Valley recorded a hefty increase in the production of some crops, and acreage for growing all crops has risen dramatically. “There has been some urbanization, but it hasn’t been as rapid (in the Antelope Valley) as it’s been in the San Gabriel Valley or the South Bay,” said Robert Donley, deputy director of the Department of the Agricultural Commissioner and Weights and Measures, which just released its 1999 crop report. “In essence, that land has been available and pretty productive for agricultural crops.” Crop production for Los Angeles County dipped nearly 2.9 percent to $260.5 million, the first decline recorded since 1992. But in the Antelope Valley, vegetable crop production rose 8.1 percent to $42.6 million, according to the report. Fruits did not fare as well because of a freeze during the 1999 growing season. But apple output, which was not affected by weather conditions, rose more than 9 percent to $840,000. The region’s planting acreage increased even more dramatically. Between 1995 and 1998, the last year for which those figures are available, farm acreage in the portion of Antelope Valley that lies within Los Angeles County increased from under 3,000 to 8,700, according to Larry Grooms, president of the Greater Antelope Valley Economic Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to attract business to the area. Even the government has gotten into the act. The city of Los Angeles, which owns about 17,750 acres in Palmdale (land it has been acquiring since 1970 to build an airport, though those plans are currently stalled), has devoted about 2,100 acres to agriculture, producing pistachio nuts, chestnuts and hay on about 240 acres and leasing out the balance to local farmers for the production of onions, carrots, potatoes, Christmas trees, gourds and sod. Farmers said the city has received requests to lease about 1,500 more acres of land for agriculture, an inexpensive way to expand production that also gives growers more flexibility if the market goes south. But the city has not made any more land available in more than five years. Officials with Los Angeles World Airports concede that the demand for land has risen markedly, but say they have not taken advantage of the market because they are still studying the use of their acreage for an airport. “Farming has been an intermediate activity,” said Charlene Klink, a spokeswoman for LAWA. The increase in production wasn’t all good news. An oversupply of onions in 1999 depressed prices considerably. But the added production also helped many farms take advantage of the increase in demand for other items like carrots and to expand their distribution domestically and even internationally. Going global “We’ve probably doubled our acreage in the last 10 years,” said Louis Scattaglia, the proprietor of Scattaglia Farms Inc. in Little Rock, which produces peaches, nectarines and plums. “Before, we concentrated more on Southern California sales, but as we continued planting more acres, we were able to go out and solicit new customers, and we had enough volume to supply them.” After increasing its acreage, Scattaglia Farms about five years ago started marketing its produce outside California and currently has a nationwide base of customers, as well as accounts in Singapore and the United Kingdom. “We used to export about 5 to 7 percent of our crop,” Scattaglia said. “Now we export 10 to 15 percent. For us, that’s a big difference.” Philip Giba Farms in Lancaster and Palmdale shipped about 20 percent of its crop production overseas to Taiwan, Honduras, Nicaragua, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates in 1999. Gene Wheeler Farms in Lancaster also exported to Japan and Taiwan last year, as well as Australia and England. “That’s a good chunk of our crop,” said Brad Sumner, sales manager for the farm. Two years ago, Wheeler Farms was instrumental in reversing a ban that Australia had placed on onions from California. The farm was able to show that the reason for the ban, a disease called onion smut that afflicted many onions grown in the state, did not affect the Antelope Valley crop because of the region’s higher elevation and lower temperatures. Swimming in onions Even with the overseas market, onion farmers took a bath on their bumper crop in 1999. “In 1999, more acres of onions were grown in this Valley than had been in my years of knowledge,” Sumner said. “We could sell them, but we didn’t get our money for them.” The increase in supply cut the price of onions by more than half from an average of around 11 cents a pound, farmers said. “What can you do to an onion to make it more appealing to the consumer?” asked Phil Giba, sole proprietor of Giba Farms. “You don’t make onion pies or onion juice, so when you have an overproduction of onions, it’s hard to move the crop.” In much of Los Angeles County, development has driven up land prices, making even the remaining plots of open space too expensive to use for farming. By the late 1990s, most of the remaining farmland in the county was located along utility power-pole right of ways. Now, even those parcels are being grabbed up for other uses that promise a greater return on investment than farming. “This last year, we lost acreage under power lines because (Southern California) Edison and other utilities decided they wanted additional property for rental and storage space,” Donley said. But in Antelope Valley, farmers had room to expand and, with rising demand for crops, they increased production in 1999 dramatically. “Consumption of carrots is up dramatically,” Giba said. “It’s mainly the baby peels,” a term that refers to baby carrots packaged and sold pre-peeled and pre-washed. “The housewife is very enthusiastic toward that.”