Pictured: Oriental Fruit Fly quarantine area. Click to enlarge.
With the abundant fruit trees in Southern California yards, there's usually a lot of wasted fruit which never gets eaten. In Altadena, Pasadena, and environs, there's the added problem that we're in an Oriental Fruit Fly (Bactrocera dorsalis), quarantine area, where fruit grown or brought into the zone cannot leave it for fear of spreading the agricultural pest.
The Arroyo Time Bank, working with RIPE Altadena (the local produce-sharing cooperative), is creating a plan to share surplus fruit within the quarantine zone.
According to Megan Hobza, who is a member of both the Whittier and Arroyo time banks, the Whittier group -- which is not in the quarantine zone -- already has a program in place where members can bank hours by harvesting and sharing surplus fruit with neighbors, even if they don't belong to the time bank. Kristin Petherbridge of Arroyo Time Bank and RIPE said that the local time bank wanted to start a similar program, but one that could work in the quarantine zone.
To explore those options, the time bank, RIPE, and Altadena Heritage hastily called a meeting Saturday morning where they could meet with Ernesto Marines, a plant health safeguarding specialist from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.
According to Marines, the quarantine began after agricultural specialists found several mated female fruit flies in county traps in August, 2010. The fly eggs are laid in fruit, which the fly maggots eat. The maggots subsequently fall to the ground, where they pupate and fly off as mature fruit flies.
Marines said that three life cycles have to pass without finding mated females before the quarantine is lifted. The life cycle depends on temperature, and cold weather will extend the fly's life cycle. Currently, the target date to lift the quarantine is May 23, 2011, but that can change.
Fruit fly host material (FFHM) includes citrus, pomegranates, persimmon, and avocado. Marines said that, while there were pre-harvest and post-harvest treatments that could kill fruit flies, the cost was prohibitive for the backyard farmer. The best way to share fruit, Marines said, was to process it -- by cooking, freezing, pureeing, dicing, or juicing -- "anything to stop the life cycle of the fly."
Backyard growers can also help by picking up dropped fruit and disposing of it in a plastic bag or green waste bin. Green waste is either shredded or buried under two to four inches of soil in the landfill, which will interrupt the life cycle, Marines said. To control the mature flies, county agriculture officials are using "kill stations," small containers of poison bait loaded with fly-attracting pheremones, which are usually posted on telephone poles. Marines said that kill stations were much more effective and environmentally-responsible than aerial spraying, such as was used to control Medflies in the late 80's-early 90's.
Fruit vendors in quarantine areas -- from grocery stores to certified farmer's markets and street vendors -- must sign compliance agreements with the state agriculture department, agreeing to follow rules and procedures to prevent unprocessed FFHM from leaving the quarantine area.
Petherbridge said that the Time Bank wanted to work with backyard growers to sign compliance agreements for their planned harvest. Backyard growers with compliance agreements are entered into a databse, where they will be informed of any changes in quarantine status or new quarantines that may be put in place. Petherbridge said that they would schedule a meeting later to bring backyard growers on board.
Marines said that he was very impressed with Altadena's pro-active stance in dealing with the quarantine: "I applaud you as a community."
For more information on the Oriental Fruit Fly quarantine:
http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/PDEP/treatment/oriental_ff.html
