"The state is implementing an emergency program for properties within a 4.5-mile radius of Medfly detections. Starting November 1, Tower said he and his family will have to spray the orchard every 10 days with insecticide. "It's all organic, it's 95% molasses, and that's what draws them in... to make sure they get the other 5%, which is a surfactant which suspends the sterilization," Tower said. It's a treatment Tower and other growers will have to do for 190 days."
"For the past eight years, they've partnered with Village Harvest, where volunteers help pick the fruit and donate it to the Second Harvest of Silicon Valley food bank. "It could be as close as half a mile, and then some of it does go up to the San Mateo for their foodbanks," Tower said. When they are harvesting, volunteers with Village Harvest come to the orchard twice a week and can fill 20 to 25 bins. "Each bin feeds about 300 families.""
A Mediterranean fruit fly infestation has triggered a Santa Clara County quarantine requiring emergency treatments within a 4.5-mile radius of detections. A North San Jose 14-acre family orange orchard will begin spraying insecticide every 10 days starting November 1, a 190-day regimen. The treatment is described as mostly organic bait (95% molasses) with a surfactant component to suspend sterilant. The orchard stopped commercial harvesting in 2018 and donates fruit to food banks through Village Harvest volunteers who harvest twice weekly, filling 20–25 bins per session; each bin feeds about 300 families. The quarantine increases labor, travel, and operational burdens on growers.
Read at ABC7 San Francisco
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