Canned peach industry hangs on in Modesto area

Peaches of the Late Ross variety weighed down limbs in an orchard east of Ceres last week. They made it through a summer of reduced water supplies and had the full shape and color sought by canneries.

The state’s canned peach industry as a whole has faced challenges, notably the reduced demand from consumers and the uncertain supply of labor to hand-pick the fruit. This year’s projected harvest of 306,000 tons is a third of the peak in the 1960s.

Yet the Northern San Joaquin Valley is a key part of what remains of the industry. Several thousand people find summer work at three canneries, processing a crop that brought an estimated $67 million in gross income to the region’s growers in 2013. It’s nowhere near what almonds and walnuts make, but it’s still part of the landscape.

“If the labor situation was corrected and the market demand is there, it’s a good crop to raise,” said Sid Long, who has done it since the 1950s and is the third generation on the family farm where those Late Ross peaches awaited harvest.

He sends his fruit to Pacific Coast Producers in Lodi, a grower-owned cooperative. Del Monte Foods has a cannery in the Beard Industrial District, just southeast of Modesto. So does Seneca Foods, which planned to sell the operation to PCP this year but was stopped by federal anti-trust concerns.

The PCP cannery also handles apricots, while Del Monte and Seneca produce apricots, pears and fruit mixes.

Long and his son, Scott, own Superior Fruit Co., on a Whitmore Avenue property that started as a rain-fed grain farm in 1906. It moved into peaches in the 1920s, following canal construction by the Turlock Irrigation District.

TID this year has reduced deliveries of Tuolumne River water by 62 percent. The Longs increased their groundwater pumping, and they have drip and micro-sprinkler systems to stretch the supplies. The heavy December rain helped, but not enough to make up for the dismal snowpack in the Sierra Nevada.

The Modesto Irrigation District slashed its supply by a similar percentage, and other districts with substantial canning peach acreage have had reductions of varying amounts.

The industry has declined in part because of the need for hand labor at harvest. Much of the land has switched to nuts, which are harvested by machine and have brought high per-pound prices in recent years.

The pay is $10 an hour for the workers who sort peaches at Superior Fruit, but pickers can earn as much as $200 day at the “piece rate,” which is based on the amount of fruit gathered. It’s hard work over seven-hour days that often get hot. The Longs and other growers have trained their trees so they no longer need tall ladders, which eases the strain on workers.

Scott Long noted promising research into mechanical harvesting of peaches, along with machines that thin the blossoms in spring to provide for fewer but better pieces of fruit.

California produces virtually all of the canning peaches in the United States. The industry contends with cheap imports, mainly from China and Greece, that are five times the volume of exports.

Canners aim to reach more consumers with low-sugar products, new packaging and other innovations. At PCP, the buyers are grocery chains with private labels, along with restaurants and other food-service outlets.

“We have pretty good demand for our products,” said Mike VanGundy, manager of the Lodi plant. “We wish we had more tons to pack and sell right now.”

PCP employs 445 people year-round and about 1,000 more during canning season at the Lodi plant. It also cans fruit in Oroville and tomatoes in Woodland.

The reduced peach acreage has helped boost the per-ton price for growers to a record $460 per ton this year, as negotiated by the California Canning Peach Association in Sacramento. It was $379 last year and $237 a decade ago.

That is good news for growers in the short-term, but the Longs said the industry’s long-term survival depends in part on federal immigration reform that includes a “guest worker” program for agriculture.

The industry also needs to simply get more people to eat peaches in cans, jars and plastic cups – not easy in a food culture where “fresh” is considered best. Canners note that their fruit is picked when it’s close to ripe, unlike much of the fresh-market crop, and the products are available at low prices year-round.

The industry also points to research showing that canning seals in many nutrients and actually increases vitamins A and C and folate.

“Your grandma did it,” Scott Long said. “There’s a reason for it. It stores well. It tastes good.”

This story was originally published August 24, 2015 at 6:32 PM with the headline "Canned peach industry hangs on in Modesto area."