Walnuts were once top crop in SLO County. Why did farmers rip out orchards in 1970s?
What you see growing in San Luis Obispo County depends on a few variables — including environment, economics and what is popular at the time.
Often the deciding factor is whether the farmer has the determination and energy to solve the endless cascade of riddles that is the agriculture industry.
San Luis Obispo County grows a variety of crops — from alfalfa hay to zinfandel grapes.
Strawberries were the county’s top crop in 2021, with a value of $319.9 million, while wine grapes came in second with a value of $281.5 million, according to the annual Agricultural Statistics report.
There are many crops that were once popular and have since fallen out of favor locally.
Wheat, almonds and sugar beets were once leading crops in the county but for various reasons are no longer at the top of the list.
Jim Gregory wrote this story, which ran in the Telegram-Tribune on March 24, 1978, about the end of an era for a walnut grove.
Arroyo walnuts on way out
“The walnut trees are gone, all over the valley.”
Florence Benningsdorf, who’s lived in Arroyo Grande more than half a century, spoke with resignation to the city Planning Commission Tuesday night.
She knew it hadn’t always been that way.
When Mrs. Benningsdorf and her first husband, Ole Gullickson, moved to Arroyo Grande from Wisconsin in 1919, walnut growing was a major concern.
Trees were being planted when Fire Chief Tony Marsalek’s father, Fred, came from Bohemia in 1907.
Those trees were maturing when Leroy Saruwatari’s grandfather, Kingo, came from Japan in the 1920s.
Now the trees are old. Their yields steadily decline. Much of the crop is infested with parasites.
Year by year, the orchards disappear, their land being converted into truck farming or subdivisions.
On Tuesday, Marsalek asked the Planning Commission to rezone the family’s nine-acre orchard for residential use.
Marsalek said that he and his wife had taken over farming his father’s orchard 10 years ago, and his gross on the orchard has declined yearly. He made only $1,400 last year.
“The only reason that we continued to farm the land was for our pride of ownership,” Marsalek said.
Then when Fred Marsalek died last year, “We made up our minds that we were through with it.”
Tony Marsalek said that he had “black-marketed some of the walnuts to our friends to get some beer money,” but he quit selling them at all when the friends discovered worms had infested the walnuts.
A farmer offered Marsalek only $27,000 for the nine acres, and Marsalek said he estimated it would cost him $100,000 to convert it to vegetables — if he could hit more water. It’s not a gamble his family is willing to take.
Next year, Marsalek said, the walnuts “can lie on the ground and rot.”
The commission voted to approve the rezoning. The final decision lies with the City Council.
Ten years ago, Mrs. Benningsdorf, a friend of Fred Marsalek’s began to sell her orchard. She knows Tony Marsalek’s regret, and that’s why she spoke for him at the Planning Commission public hearing.
Mrs. Benningsdorf and her first husband bought the land in 1930 and put in walnuts and artichokes in 1935.
The orchard kept them going during the Depression, she said, “when none of us had any money.”
She remembers harvest time: “Our hands were black for six weeks” from the stains the hulls left.
“I loved it then,” she said.
Ole Gullickson died in 1955, and Mrs. Benningsdorf “really had to struggle.”
She asked a family friend, George Taylor, to farm the six-acre orchard.
“But he gave it up about 1960. He couldn’t even make wages on it — it just wasn’t big enough.”
This week, a big Caterpillar tractor plowed through orchard mud, towing a ripper behind which was uprooting Leroy Saruwatari’s walnut trees. He has 10 acres of trees left. He once had 40.
Economic and natural pressures are forcing Saruwatari out of walnuts. His 70-year-old trees can’t compete with newer varieties grown in the San Joaquin Valley. Walnut prices are down; his costs are up. Husk fly larvae have infested the walnuts.
“The only way we’ve been able to stay in walnuts this long,” he said, “is to supply our own labor — my parents, my wife and I.”
He said the land will be converted to row crops, which provide better prices and at least two harvests a year.
Saruwatari said he doesn’t want his land to change into subdivisions “just like the walnuts had to change to vegetable crops.
So the farmers will hang on to the orchards.
A few walnut trees stand in the yards on Allen Street, where Mrs Benningsdorf once farmed. The trees are primarily decorative, mostly unpruned and essential useless.
The one lot Mrs. Benningsdorf still owns, there is nothing at all.
