Volunteers are salvaging far fewer crops for Ventura County's needy as land and fuel prices rise, farmland is developed and the crews available to pick surplus crops dwindle.

Officials at FOOD Share, the county's regional food bank, say the amount of fresh produce gleaned from local farms and ranches has plummeted by thousands of pounds a month over the past few years, forcing more crops to be trucked in at higher cost.

Managers say the downturn hasn't hurt supply; they're giving away more fruits and vegetables than ever at a time when the agency is committed to fighting obesity in poor neighborhoods. But some say there's much less choice.

"We certainly are not getting the variety of foods we used to have," said Cecilia Rexford, who has operated the food pantry at Camarillo Community Church for 18 years. "We used to have things like broccoli every week, spinach, celery, lettuce, stuff that was grown locally. It was very good produce, better than some of the stuff you got in the grocery stores."

The decline comes at a time when there's a desperate need for food with growing demand and rising prices, said Sandy Bishop, chief executive officer of FOOD Share.

"We need to focus on how we can increase gleaning," she said.

Changes in farm economy

The number of major growers allowing gleaning has dropped from 20 to half a dozen, officials said. Instead, the calls come from homeowners who want to give away the citrus and avocados growing in their yards before they rot.

"We used to pick carrots, onions, celery, radishes," volunteer Joe Birg, 75, said as he harvested Valencia oranges one day last month at an upscale home in Camarillo. "We don't pick any of that anymore. The only thing now is oranges, avocados, lemons."

FOOD Share officials blame changes in the farm economy. So much land is being leased out to multiple interests that it's hard to find farm managers who can grant permission for volunteers to pick the fields. Growers beset by high land costs are harvesting and replanting before the sun sets. Many farmers also are raising lucrative berries instead of the lower-profit vegetables the agency needs.

"Because strawberries and raspberries are so prevalent, it drastically reduced the number of other available crops to pick," said Jayson Muelder, operations manager for the nonprofit serving 38,000 people a month. "The number of farms with excess crop is not out there."

Personnel decisions blamed

Bishop said temporary setbacks fueled the decrease, namely last year's freeze and farmers' reluctance to allow volunteers in fields after the salmonella and botulism scares.

However, volunteers blame personnel decisions at FOOD Share for part of the problem.

During 12 years on the job, gleaning supervisor Roger Davis drove around the county looking for fields, speaking Spanish with foremen to find jobs. After Davis retired in 2006, Muelder decided that his replacement should spend only three hours a day on the task.

Muelder said farm economics had changed so much since Davis took on the assignment in the early 1990s that it was no longer worth it to assign someone full time.

"With what's out there and available, that's really all it necessitates," he said.

Davis' replacement, Andy Murphy, said some volunteer gleaners quit after Davis retired. Others became disaffected the next year when FOOD Share's board decided to stop allowing volunteers to take home free food. Until then, each gleaner had been able to take home a bucket of produce from the fields.

Former gleaner Don Vanasse, 76, of Camarillo said it was one reason he quit.

"It just meant that we're not that important," said the retired helicopter mechanic.

"A lot of people felt the same way. What's the point? We can't take a bucket of oranges home. The stuff was going to go bad anyway."

Bishop recommended stopping the giveaways. The Internal Revenue Service could view that as compensation, jeopardizing the agency's tax-exempt status, she said.

The IRS allows occasional and small gifts of "low market value" to volunteers, but, Bishop said, the gleaners were taking food regularly, some of it high-cost items. "Avocados are not low market value," she said.

America's Second Harvest, which supplies food to a network of food banks including FOOD Share, also bans the practice.

Roster of volunteers shrinks

The number of gleaners is now down to a couple of dozen, a dip officials blame on gasoline prices and the fact that baby boomers still in the work force are not showing up to replace the older volunteers.

As late as 1993, crews would often pick at two sites a day, but they may go to only a few sites a week now.

Davis said he had a roster of 150 volunteers, with 40 available at any one time. By the time he left, the available crew had shrunk to 15 or 20, he said.

Volunteers say half a dozen now show up on an average pick and sometimes as few as three.

Nine turned up to pick citrus at Judi and Clark McKay's home in Camarillo one morning late last month. With property containing 120 citrus trees, the couple needs help harvesting the bounty that would otherwise drop and rot.

As the smell of oranges wafted in the air, the volunteers, wearing hats, work clothes, gloves and sunscreen, picked ripening oranges. They enjoy the views, the feeling of doing something good, the friendship, the exercise.

"You don't have to go to Gold's Gym after this," said retired hairdresser Dina DeSimone, 62, of Camarillo.

Some fear that gleaning, rare in the nation as a whole, is fading away.

The Second Harvest Bank of Orange County started purely as a gleaning operation 25 years ago, but with urbanization found few jobs. Instead, the agency grows local produce on land owned by the city of Irvine and the Orange County Register.

Those plots generated 260,000 pounds of celery, cauli-flower, green onions, broccoli and squash last year. The yield from gleaning is meager.

"If we get a call to glean, we will," said General Manager Jerry Creekpaum. "It's usually somebody's backyard orchard."

'Freight is astronomical'

Many of the state's food banks, including those in Ventura and Orange counties, get the bulk of their produce from the California Association of Food Banks. The agency solicits donations from growers, who provide the food either free or at deeply discounted prices. It is surplus product or unsuitable for the market because of size or appearance.

Gleaning produces perhaps only 10 percent of the 3 million pounds the Oxnard food bank gives away annually. Muelder said the state association provides a more reliable supply, albeit at higher cost.

"We're paying up to 5 to 10 cents a pound, plus freight," Muelder said. "Freight is astronomical. It has gone from $600 a load to $750 a load."

But it's unlikely that gleaning will meet the need, Muelder said, adding that at its peak it totaled perhaps 500,000 pounds a year.

Stricter regulations on farms

Now it is far less. About 200,000 pounds were gleaned in 2006, a figure that dropped to roughly 135,000 pounds last year. So far this year, crews have harvested less than 35,000 pounds.

"I see there being stricter and stricter regulations on produce farms," Muelder said. "I think it's going to get harder and harder to be out in some of the fields. As more homes are built, it's going to mean less food available for donation."

Only a handful of food banks nationwide have gleaning programs, said Ross Fraser, spokesman for America's Second Harvest.

They tend to be in agricultural areas such as Ventura County, where seven friends started gleaning in the late 1970s to feed homeless people living under a Ventura bridge. The group asked farmers to let them pick surplus crops in their fields, using a Biblical passage in the Book of Leviticus as their guide.

"It says, Don't glean the corners of the field, save it for the poor and strangers," said Jewel Pedi, a gleaner who helped found FOOD Share.

That was a different time, when farmers could leave a field for a few days so volunteers could come in and glean. No more, farmers say.

Land is at a premium

Scott Deardorff, president of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County, said land is at a premium, costing $2,000 to $2,500 per acre per year to lease.

"You have to turn it over as soon as you can, to get another crop in there," the Oxnard grower said. "Our window for gleaners is all but gone."

FOOD Share officials are looking for ways to reverse the trend.

Among the solutions being entertained: bringing volunteers in on Saturdays and asking churches, social and fraternal groups to provide gleaners. Davis also has agreed to help the new gleaning supervisor, Lance Ferguson, find fields.

Muelder said the agency isn't giving up on its cornerstone.

"Gleaning is what FOOD Share was founded on," Muelder said. "We fully embrace it."