Like many California strawberry growers, California Giant Berry Farms in Watsonville, CA, grows strawberries in three districts in California: Oxnard, Santa Maria and Watsonville. This year, the company’s acreage in Oxnard is “pretty much the same as last year,” according to Cindy Jewell, marketing director.

In Santa Maria, the company’s overall strawberry acreage will up this year. Much of that increase, however, will be in summer plantings for the fall harvest. “We will have a lot more in the fall in Santa Maria,” Jewell said Jan. 23. For spring, “our acreage increased maybe 10 percent.”

Nick Chappell, Kristin Kleiber, Anthony Gallino, Jerry Moran, Sandy Jurach, Serjio Sanchez, John Tietz, Sherry Castro and Cindy Jewell of California Giant Berry Farms. (Photo courtesy of California Giant Berry Farms)Although California Giant’s Oxnard acreage is steady this year as compared to a year ago, it is down from what it has been in some years past, Jewell said. “We don’t have huge acreage like we used to in Oxnard.”

It is “just because we haven’t had a good strong short day variety in that region” that “we really haven’t grown in acreage,” she said.

The principal variety California Giant is currently growing in Oxnard is San Andreas, a day-neutral variety.

Typically, California Giant starts its harvest in Oxnard around Christmastime, “and we hope to go into June,” Jewell said.

In most years, the winter and early spring harvest is subject to weather disruptions such as rain or frost. This year, however, the winter growing season has been uncharacteristically warm and dry and the berries are coming on strong, Jewell said. “I’m eating them a lot. They taste real good and they look great.”

Remarkably, the harvest in Santa Maria had also started in a light way, which is a month earlier than usual, she said. “They are just walking the fields getting a few here and there, but that has never happened this early.”

While lack of rainfall and unseasonably warm temperatures may have the advantage of helping assure a steady, reliable supply of berries for the market, something buyers certainly appreciate, the lack of rain fall longer-term is a matter of serious concern to growers. Among other things, “the season may be cut short this year” due to the “water uncertainty.”

On the positive side, the current marketing climate was very good, Jewell said. Even with the unusually high volume currently coming out of Oxnard and the “horrible weather conditions on the East Coast,” demand is “really strong” and prices are good. “It is a really good time to promote strawberries.”

Consumers are “really excited” about strawberries, she said.”I’m getting a lot of … emails” from consumers who say that at a time when they are having to dig themselves out of the house due to the heavy snowstorms, they are very thankful to have nice fresh beautiful strawberries.”

On the marketing side, California Giant is “doing a lot in social media this year,” Jewell said. “That seems to be the central focus of our program, connecting with consumers, and it has worked out really well. We are building a data base of consumers who are really loyal to our brand and provide us with great information on how to improve the information that we give them. Our program is really being molded by our customers.”

As an example, consumers are saying that they want even more recipes, and they want “kid-friendly” recipes, so California Giant is putting more and more recipes online and particularly recipes that can involve the whole family, she said.

California Giant has “definitely beefed up our food safety program this year,” she said. “We have hired another food-safety person, so we now have two food-safety people on staff, and we are trying to build up our field-level training program. We are seeing great results from the program we put in place last year.”

Last year, the company also put an increased focus on quality control, putting QA people on location in the fields and in every facility to make sure that what went in the box and what was shipped out to customers met “very consistent quality control standards,” she said. “We saw a big difference last year, and we look forward to this year being even better.”