Are these grapes game-changers? Why one Fresno farmer says, ‘They’re Frankensteins’
Dwayne Cardoza, who farms about 400 acres of organic raisins for Newman’s Own brand, is heading into his 46th growing season with a renewed sense of hope.
He, like many other raisin farmers faced with rising labor costs and increased foreign competitors, is turning to innovation and a new way of thinking.
That’s why Cardoza is eager to show off a 10-acre block of experimental grapes on his west Fresno County farm. The vines are marked off with plastic tie tape and look like any other vineyard, with one notable exception. The hanging bunches of grapes are in various stages of dehydrating.
What’s even more remarkable to Cardoza is that the new vines produced fruit earlier than expected.
“These vines are just two years old and they should not have a crop on them until year three,” Cardoza says excitedly. “They’re Frankensteins.”
Developed by International Fruit Genetics in Bakersfield, Cardoza said the new grape variety, known as Rais-One, is specially bred to dry itself into a raisin, without cutting it off the vine and laying it in the sun.
The new conventionally bred dried-on-the-vine grape is one of several created by IFG, now known as Bloom Fresh, but is the only one commercially planted, said Dustin Hooper, a commercial manager for Bloom Fresh Global.
IFG is the fruit breeder that created the Cotton Candy grape, the surprisingly sweet grape with a slight spun-sugar flavor.
Hooper said five acres of Rais-One will come into production this year, then another 15 acres in 2025. Three other varieties, Sheegene 27, 28 & 29, are currently in trials.
Rais-One isn’t the only dried-on-the-vine variety available to growers. David Ramming, now retired from USDA’s Agricultural Research Center at Parlier, developed Sunpreme, a grape that also spontaneously dries on the vine.
In conventional raisin making, a worker will use a curved knife to cut a plump bunch of Thompson seedless grapes from the vine and place it on a paper tray to dry into raisins.
If it doesn’t rain heavily, it will take about two weeks for the grapes to dry into raisins. Then, workers return to pick up the fruit and dump them into bins to be taken to a packing house for processing.
As enthusiastic as Cardoza is about the new grape, he admits he still has to please his customer. Cardoza has already heard from at least one buyer who wants the raisin to have a harder, chewier skin that you get from sun-dried fruit. To get that texture Cardoza is laying the nearly dried bunches in the sun for a few days.
“It’s what the customer wants and it’s what we try to achieve,” he said. “I also have bakers who prefer a softer raisin for their recipes, so it varies.”
The U.S. is no longer the raisin growing champion of the world. Turkey took the top spot years ago. Also, countries including Iran, Greece and Chile are major producers. And they all vie for the same global buyers.
To stay in the game, raisin growers have increasingly shifted to mechanical harvesting as a way to reduce labor costs. Industry officials estimate that about 30% of the raisins harvested in California are done by some form of mechanization.
Labor has, and continues to be, the industry’s biggest cost and toughest element to manage. Raisins is one of the most labor intensive crops to grow and harvest in California.
“The future is to get away from as much labor as you can,” Cardoza said. “We can’t compete with the labor costs of our foreign competitors. We have to do something different.”
In the 1990’s, picking raisins required 40,000 to 50,000 workers for the six-week, late-summer harvest, according to a 2009 study by farm labor experts, Phillip Martin of the University of California and Bert Mason from Fresno State.
Although fewer acres of raisins require fewer workers, the cost of hiring skilled workers to cut grape bunches, lay them on sheets of paper to dry still remains high.
Increasing demand has always been a challenge for raisins, a dried fruit that is either loved or reviled. California’s raisins are used in a variety of ways including by the baking industry and as a healthy snack food.
At Sun-Maid, the company has been making inroads in the snack category with a slew of new products, including sour raisin fruit snacks, dried fruit mixes, and a new line of products aimed at adults called Farmstand Reserve.
The snacks that come in 0.8 ounce bag range from the healthy, dried mixed berries, to the slightly decadent, sea salt cocoa & caramel dusted raisins.
Jenna Smiley, Sun-Maid’s grower support manager, said that along with develop new products the cooperative is also looking at new grape varieties and has done panel evaluations of different raisin grapes.
“It is part of the sustainability of this industry to look for new varieties to reduce the economics for the grower,” Smiley said.
Smiley added that Sun-Maid is in the “investigative” phase of the new varieties of dried on the vine grapes.
How many acres of raisins and raisin farmers will remain is anybody’s guess.
Cardoza and other growers believe the days of producing 400,000 tons of raisins are likely over. This year they will probably produce about half of that, or around 200,000 tons.
“It’s going to become a niche industry,” he said. “And there probably isn’t going to be as many guys doing it.”
This story was originally published August 28, 2024 at 6:30 AM.
