Vine harvesting: A ripe idea?
Most say it could be decades, if ever, before mechanical
raisin harvesting becomes widespread.

Dennis Pollock

The Fresno Bee, August 24, 1997, p. C1

Somewhere near Caruthers last week, a raisin grower looked to the west and saw lightning. With 50 workers gathered, ready to start the harvest and to lay out grapes for drying, it was not a good sign.

Not wanting to take a risk, the grower sent the workers home. As it turned out, devastating rains didn't come.

But the frustrating event illustrates two perils faced each year by the half-billion-dollar raisin industry in the Valley: a need for thousands of workers during a short period and the risk that rain at the wrong time could steal the year's crop.

Largely because of those two factors, growers are looking into the alternative of drying raisins on the vine and harvesting them mechanically.

That approach, which would revolutionize the industry, is taking place quietly and on a limited scale. Most growers and industry observers say it could be decades, if ever, before the mechanical harvest of dried raisins could become widespread. Most of the trial efforts have been in the past five years.

But this summer, greater national attention was focused on dried-on-the-vine developments by a study commissioned by the Center for Immigration Studies based in Washington, D.C.

The study was prepared by agricultural researchers at California State University, Fresno, and released in June. It found, among other things, that so-called "DOV" (dried-on-the-vine raisins) can be harvested using 60 percent to 85 percent less labor, yield can often be increased and the grapes are less susceptible to rain damage.

But it said "one obvious barrier to adoption (of the dried-on-the-vine approach) is the continued availability of cheap and abundant labor supplies from Mexico."

The report said growers employ 40,000 to 50,000 workers for the three- to four-week harvest period.

The researchers say half the harvest work force is likely to be in the United States illegally. They note that support of a legal, temporary guest worker program remains the top choice in the industry.

Research on DOV production began in Australia more than 20 years ago. The Center for Immigration Studies used the recent findings as a springboard to press its advocacy of controls on immigration.

According to a statement issued by Executive Director Mark Krikorian: "Lawmakers would do well to keep in mind high immigration's potentially harmful impact on agricultural innovation and efficiency when considering proposals for special immigration programs to introduce additional farm workers into the United States.

"This (DOV approach) shows that large pools of cheap, docile labor are not necessary for American agriculture to prosper," Krikorian later said. "This does not cut the overall time spent in production, but spreads the labor out so that people can hire a smaller number of people who can live in a real house like human beings instead of sleeping on cardboard outside. It civilizes that part of farm work."

Improvements seen

Krikorian cited examples of production of other commodities that actually improved when growers were either forced by political or economic forces to move away from hand labor toward mechanization. They included the tomato harvest in the Valley and sugar cane in Florida in more recent years. Much longer ago, it was cotton.

"Is the cotton industry and America worse off for (mechanization)?" he asked. "Are Alabama and Mississippi and the United States worse off? I would say the descendants of those who picked cotton are better off (because of mechanized harvest)."

The Fresno State researchers point out that the industry is dominated by small growers and their average age is 63. That makes it unlikely growers will choose to embark on a costly retrofit that could take years to recoup their investment.

The report's authors are Bert Mason, director of the Center for Agricultural Business and professor of agricultural economics at Fresno State; R. Keith Striegler, intermim director and research scientist; and Gregory T. Berg, research associate with the Viticulture and Enology Research Center on campus.

And Krikorian said there are guest worker bills in the Senate and House.

Pool would have to dry up

Krikorian believes a move to widespread DOV use would only come "if the large pool of Mexican labor is cut off."

The availability of that labor is, indeed, a concern among growers of raisin grapes.

"Sometimes there is a tight labor pool," said Herman Nielsen, a Caruthers-area grower who has 22 of his 40 acres converted to DOV. "Manual labor, in general, is less attractive to the general population, and looking into the future, it seems obvious we will have significant labor problems with that need."

Nielsen is chairman of a DOV committee at Sun-Maid Raisin Growers, where a variety of growing and harvesting methods have been tried.

"We're a couple of years away from having enough history under our belts to say it's the best thing since sliced bread," Nielsen said of the technique. He estimated DOV acreage probably amounts to no more than 500 of the industry's 200,000 acres of raisin grapes. "But the potential is tremendous."

He said most of the cost of trials is being borne by the growers who are experimenting.

The Fresno State researchers cited a survey of raisin growers in 1991 that said just 28 percent of respondents indicated they would consider shifting to a mechanized harvest system in the event of a labor shortage.

Money up front

Nielsen, as well as the Fresno State researchers, point out that DOV requires an up-front investment by growers. Sun-Maid's efforts have largely been aimed at existing vineyards, but preparation for mechanical harvest means changing the trellis systems. Nielsen said a recent development is placement of fruiting canes "on the south or sunny side of the vine" to hasten drying.

Nielsen said developers of machinery to cut the canes and to shake the raisins off are watching DOV as a possible future market. One of them is Phil Scott, owner of Ag-Right Harvesters in Madera.

"I think it's going to be very slow to develop," Scott said. "The thing that will spur it would be a shortage of labor. A farmer is pretty much content to do what he did last year."

Sun-Maid growers are not the only ones who are trying out DOV.

Fowler grower John Paboojian said he also expects "there will be problems with borders and labor in the future. And I don't think down the road, we can make it by producing 2.5 tons an acre. We're trying to get five to an acre."

He cited the successes of Madera grower Lee Simpson at increasing yields.

Ready earlier

Simpson uses a rare approach to DOV: pergola trellising that shades the whole vineyard floor much of the summer. He has also planted a variety of grape -- the Fiesta -- that is ready for harvest sooner than the more common Thompson seedless.

Simpson, and Simpson Vineyards manager Deborah Delaney point out one reason for their increased yield is that they planted twice the number of vines that a conventional vineyard would have. They put the vineyard in six years ago on 145 acres and are now into a fourth crop.

Educated as a civil engineer, Simpson said he noted that a lot of sunlight simply falls on the ground in most vineyards.

"By using the pergola system, you can see there is very little light on the ground," Delaney said. "This gets maximum use of photosynthesis for a healthy plant with more sugar and productivity."

Simpson said the start-up costs were high because of the doubled plantings and additional stakes.

But he estimates he has cut his labor cost for production from $ 220 per ton to $ 28 per ton, that his harvest was 4.5 tons per acre "last year, which was a short year," and he's projecting more than 5 tons per acre this year.

He said the conventional vineyard would yield two tons per acre, commanding $ 1,000 a ton, but that acre cost $ 600 to produce. He said he will get 5 tons per acre at a cost of $ 560 a ton.

"This has leveled the labor (needs)," he said. "There are fewer (employees) but they're working all year round, and that's an advantage for them and for me.

"I have five people working year-round and hire five extra workers to cut canes and two or three to prune, compared to 100 working 10 days at harvest."

The Fresno State researchers note that Simpson's vineyard cost $ 4,500 an acre (exclusive of land costs) for planting, trellising, ground preparation and installation of subsurface drip irrigation. That's about $ 2,500 per acre more than conventional planting would cost.

Crucial to research

Just as the Valley is the nation's center for the raisin industry, it also harbors key research into DOV.

Pete Christensen, viticulture specialist at the University of California's Kearney Agricultural Center in Parlier, has been exploring DOV for 15 years.

In Fresno, U.S. Department of Agriculture research horticulturist David Ramming developed the DOVine variety that was released in 1995. It was also at that center that the Fiesta was developed and released in 1973 by John Weinberger.

Ramming said more than 1,000 acres of Fiesta grapes have been planted and DOVine plantings are just getting under way.

In the meantime, growers will continue to watch the skies this time of year -- and all those workers in the fields.