Avocado coverage

The Packer's John Chadwell wrote this coverage about the avocado outlook in California. John writes:

Despite reports of up to a third of California’s avocado acreage damaged by fires, the industry would still have plenty of fruit to supply the needs for the Super Bowl in February and Cinco de Mayo, according to the California Avocado Commission, Irvine.“Everything north of Los Angeles has not burned,” Guy Whitney, director of industry affairs for Irvine-based California Avocado Commission, said Oct. 24. “And the bulk of our new acreage over the last five years has been in that area. So we have a lot of acreage that in the next one to two years will come into full production and will put us right back where we were, even if we lose a third of acreage that’s in San Diego County.”


Here are some consumer press stories about the avocados and fire damage;

Wildfires torch Southern California farms, avocado crop hard hit From the AP:

Wind-driven wildfires torching Southern California have charred fruit orchards, wilted flowers and littered the ground with avocados, delivering a devastating blow to area farmers already reeling from a deep winter freeze and the long drought that followed.
The final damage for growers will not be known until they are allowed to return to their lands, but some estimate losses in the millions of dollars.
"This situation here is the worst I've seen in terms of impact on individuals, families, homes, businesses," said Charley Wolk, who has been farming in San Diego County for 35 years, and now manages hundreds of acres (hectares) of mostly avocados, citrus and flowers.


In the aftermath of fires, farmers try to salvage crops, figure out claims - assuming they have insurance From San Diego Union-Tribune:
Last year, 52 percent of California's cropland was covered by crop insurance, according to the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. Of the estimated 62,000 California acres devoted to avocados, 53 percent was insured. Crops didn't have to burn for farmers to suffer losses. Because many growers were evacuated, farms went days without crucial irrigation that can mean life or death for certain crops.