Illinois growers give chilly forecast for this year

Prolonged freeze may have dealt death blow to crop

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

By JIM SUHR

AP Business Writer

ST. LOUIS - With each cut into his orchard's baby peaches revealing only blackness, Tom Schwartz suspected what many fellow Illinois fruit growers are fretting about: This year's crop could be the pits.

"There's nothing alive. They're all dead," Schwartz said Monday at the orchard near Centralia, where his peaches and apples have suffered from an extended cold snap. "They say you pay your bills with apples and make your money with peaches. This year, you're not going to make anything on either side."

Such is the sentiment among peach growers around Illinois and throughout the South since a warm, bud-producing March gave way to a prolonged April freeze that many worry has wreaked havoc on fruit crops.

"It don't look real good," said Joe Ringhausen, who estimates he's lost all but about 20 percent of his would-be peach crop in his orchards near the Illinois towns of Jerseyville and Fieldon, northeast of St. Louis. With few exceptions, "the little peaches are black, they're dead."

For Ringhausen, 72, it's no small deal: He makes his living off fruit such as apples and peaches, which in their early stages often can't survive several nights of subfreezing temperatures.

"It's a little depressing," Ringhausen said.

Any substantial loss to the crops could translate into higher prices for the fruit at grocery stores and farmer's markets, although the impact won't be known for some time yet.

Across the United States, where more than 40 states grow peaches, growers last year produced 1.3 billion pounds of peaches, down from the roughly 1.4 billion pounds the year before, according to Charles Walker, executive director of the Columbia, S.C.-based National Peach Council.

California led the way with 706 million pounds of peaches; Illinois ranked ninth last year, accounting for 22.7 million pounds, Walker said Monday.

Farmers in Illinois, however, say things aren't looking good.

At the family-run Eckert's Country Store and Farms, with three Illinois sites in suburban St. Louis, Chris Eckert on Monday reported "pretty bad" damage among the business' 220 acres of peaches, with some varieties weathering the recent cold better than others.

Eckert's roughly 175 acres of apple trees will produce a lighter crop, though the yield is yet to be seen, he said.

Around the rolling hills of southern Illinois near Alto Pass, Wayne "Ren" Sirles is trying to remain upbeat despite conceding the freeze left "quite a bit of damage" among the 140 acres of peach trees in his Rendleman Orchards.

"I know we're hurt," the 65-year-old grower said. "To say we're 100 percent killed, I won't say that. Mother Nature has a way of making a liar out of you. A peach is just like a sick person - while some die, others can come out of the sickness."

The true toll could be known in a week, he said.

"I've seen some (peaches) that I know are completely dead, and there are some I looked at that were maybes," he said. When it comes to assessing the real extent of damage, "I can't determine it this fast."

Sirles has seen this kind of thing before: In 1997, he lost three-quarters of his crop.

"That's just the way it is," he said of an industry that doesn't get government subsidies and can recoup some, but not all, of its losses through insurance. "You cannot buy enough insurance to cover your entire crop."

Schwartz said significant losses also could affect sellers of everything from chemical sprays to fertilizers and boxes for peaches while lessening demand for migrant workers dependent on that income come time to prune, pick or work roadside markets.

Still, many Illinois growers have other produce to fall back on, such as berries that have yet to bud and aren't likely to be affected by the latest cold. At Eckert's, for instance, Chris Eckert said the business' six acres of strawberries, covered in tarps last week, emerged "in pretty good shape."

Some even credit the weather with thinning the trees - something they often have had to do by hand to give the fruit more room and energy to grow.

Some consolation, Rendleman says.

"It's not a business for the faint of heart," he said.