President’s Message: Celebrating the End of Fruit Fly Quarantines in California

By Casey Creamer, CCM President/CEO

Last week, officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) gathered to announce the end of all seven fruit fly quarantines in California. We were asked to participate in the press event in LA to share how the fruit fly outbreak impacted the state’s iconic citrus industry and the general public’s important role in ensuring our food supply is protected.

Citrus growers were amongst the most directly impacted in the state.  Quarantines surrounded and included some commercial citrus in Ventura County, but the majority of affected commercial citrus was within the Oriental Fruit Fly (OFF) quarantine in San Bernardino and Riverside County.

Growers in the quarantine faced additional spray mitigations and the loss of export market access. Growers within the core area had limited options – either field juice or strip and destroy the crop entirely. The rest of the California citrus industry faced the potential of export markets shutting down completely.

At CCM, we knew that the most important thing we could do to protect growers was to see the end of the fruit fly threat to California as soon as possible. This required persistent coordination between industry and government officials from USDA and CDFA to ensure everything that could be done was being done.

The significant limiting factor was funding for federal, state, and local officials working the large number of quarantines across the state. Initial funding came from USDA, but projections indicated they would run out of money.

CCM jumped into action to support CDFA’s requests to the Governor and legislature for additional funding from California. We also sponsored legislation with Assemblymember Eloise Reyes-Gomez to draw additional attention to invasive pests and educate legislators and staff on the crisis and the need for funding specifically for fruit fly eradication. This resulted in $48 million in additional funds from California to support the over $100 million allocated by USDA.

Thanks to the hard work of local county agricultural commissioners, CDFA, and USDA, along with the cooperation of local growers and residents, the most significant fruit fly outbreak in California’s history is now behind us. But the work is not complete. We must stay vigilant as an industry to ensure such outbreaks don’t happen again. To do so will require:

1. Effective collaboration and focus from state and federal agencies to ramp up efforts to prevent pests from entering California.
2. A shift in the California perspective on pesticide policies that limit tools that effectively limit pest outbreaks and damage integrated pest management.
3. Constant education with legislators from urban areas about the importance of California agriculture to their constituents.

This is the work that CCM is doing and will continue to prioritize moving forward, along with our citrus industry partners, who also played significant roles in working with impacted growers and packinghouses within the quarantines.

We must also continue to work with allies wherever we can find them, no matter how unlikely they may be. Most of the time, this is issue-specific and requires us to leave our differences at the door to hammer out the solutions for the day.

Developing relationships, credibility, and trust with policymakers who can affect our livelihoods is necessary. It’s not always popular, but we are okay with losing the popularity contest if it means doing our part to protect the viability of California’s citrus growers.