Orchard Sends No ‘Lemons’ to Finicky Japanese Markets

When Hatsuko Oba, a housewife in Kawasaki, Japan, goes shopping for the perfect lemon, she chooses Sunkist. And although she does not know it, chances are the perfectly curved, perfectly yellow, flawless lemon that she selects from the produce section of her local Yokado Supermarket came from Ventura County.

From cars to perfumes to Gucci handbags, the Japanese have a refined sense of the kata--or ideal form--any object should have. And when it comes to lemons, the Japanese are willing to pay top dollar for lemons the likes of which many American shoppers may never see on their local supermarket shelves.

The bulk of those perfect lemons come from Ventura County. Literally thousands of cartons--marked in Japanese characters that read sunkisto remon (Sunkist lemon)--begin their long journey to the land of the rising sun from the sprawling Limoneira orchards in Santa Paula.

Although all Sunkist growers use Sunkist cartons, each packinghouse has its own trademark. In Ventura County, first choice lemons from Limoneira in Santa Paula are called “Santas.” They go out in crates with a colorful label of a Santa Claus. The second-grade lemons are known as “Paulas.” Their labels show a seductive Spanish woman with a fan.

Japan gets almost all “Santas.” The United States ends up with a lot of “Paulas.”

“Our absolute highest quality stuff goes to Japan,” says Pierre Tada, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Limoneira Co. “We don’t send anything to Japan that isn’t perfect.”

By value, Ventura County is the largest producer of lemons in California, and California is the largest producer in the United States, according to Kerry Bustamonte, deputy agricultural commissioner for Ventura County. And Limoneira is the largest lemon grower in the area.

As of 1995, the county had 26,630 acres of lemon groves, producing a crop valued at $197 million, according to an annual report compiled by the county agricultural commissioner. In all the world, only Argentina produces more lemons--but they still have quality and disease problems, Tada says.

About 40% of Limoneira’s lemons go to the Pacific Rim, according to Tada--reaching consumers as far away as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.

But it is Japan that is the most finicky. “Japanese are the pickiest of all--and not by a little, by a lot,” Tada says. “They really want the best stuff.”

Ventura’s cool sea breezes and temperate coastal climate allow growers to produce high-quality lemons year-round.

Limoneira’s links to Japan go back to the company’s earliest days. In photos of the lemon groves from the 1890s, dozens of Japanese can be seen among the sun-tanned faces of the pickers.

Today, Japanese businessmen visit Limoneira’s scenic plant regularly. Tada, himself a third-generation Japanese-American, speaks fluent Japanese as he wines and dines his corporate clients who hail from some of Japan’s most famed trading companies, including Mitsubishi, Nikko Seika and Nikko Boeki.

The Limoneira company is a founding member of the huge Sunkist marketing cooperative--supplying Sunkist with a substantial portion of its lemons. Sunkist ships 3.9 million cartons of lemons to Japan every year: 3.8 million of those are first choice--the top grade of lemons. This compares with only 4.8 million cartons of first choice lemons that stay in the United States--which has twice the population of Japan.

More than half of the top-grade lemons that Sunkist packs into giant refrigerator ships--a whopping 2.1 million cartons--originate in Ventura.

So what is the perfect lemon?

Leading the way through Limoneira’s sophisticated sorting facility, Tada explains that different markets demand different qualities in their lemons. The Japanese, for example, like their lemons large, even though flavor does not vary depending on size or color.

They are graded purely by appearance. Lemons come in three grades: first choice--or sunkist--which are the premium lemons; choice, which are the second-grade lemons; and products--which may be slightly nicked, scarred or in some other way deformed, and are squeezed to make lemon juice.

The best lemons are an even yellow from tip to tip, and have the stereotypical lemon shape--neither too round, nor too oblong. Getting the lemons to match the consumer’s idea of a good lemon can be tricky.

Pickers pluck the fruit from the trees when it reaches a certain size--which varies depending on the season, or when it is a perfect lemon-yellow.

Size is the primary guideline. Whether they are yellow, A-silver and B-silver (still green at the tips) or very green, they have to be picked because otherwise they keep growing until they are as large as grapefruit, Tada says.

After being picked, the lemons are stored in a giant basement refrigerator facility, classified by color and quality. The yellow lemons are sent right to market, the green ones are held until they mellow to yellow. From an open crate, Tada picks out a 4-inch lemon specimen--yellow from tip to tip, and almost perfectly oval, with symmetrical tips.

“This is the kind of lemon the Japanese like,” he says, holding it up to the light to inspect it.

He picks up another too, round with pocked skin. This one will become juice.

Machines, computers and cameras are used to separate and re-separate the lemons. Freshly polished and washed lemons are ferried along on lanes of conveyor belts. They spin under special cameras that judge their quality and are then popped off into the appropriate direction--first grade to the left, choice to the right. From there, sorters do a final once-over, pulling out less than perfect lemons the machines missed.

Then the lemons are sorted by size. They pop out the end of the circuit like winnings at a casino--appropriately packed in boxes of 95 to 165 lemons.

From there the most precious of lemons begin their journey to the east. They head to Port Hueneme, where they are loaded onto a refrigerated ship--kept at exactly 41 degrees Fahrenheit. In 12 days, they will reach Tokyo.

Japan is able to get the pick of Ventura’s lemon groves because the economic dividends are high for local growers.

“They want the top grade, and they are willing to pay for it,” explains Bill Quarles, vice president of corporate relations for Sunkist. The packing price is about $25 for a 40-pound carton holding about 115 lemons. That’s about 22 cents a lemon.

By the time those lemons reach the quality-conscious consumer in Japan, their value has soared. Wrapped in crinkly cellophane bags--singly or in pairs--displayed in the supermarket produce section like miniature works of art, these first-grade Ventura lemons sell for 88 to 100 yen apiece--about 95 cents.

But they can hold their own alongside the softball-sized apples and peaches that adorn the shelves of Japan’s grocery stores.

At the top-of-the-line fruit boutiques, where melons sell for $30, and strawberries are symmetrically lined up in boxes selling for $20, a single lemon can sell for as much as 150 or 200 yen--or close to $2.

“Those lemons are beautiful and big,” Japanese housewife Oba says of the mammoth boutique lemons.

American lemon producers have a virtual lock on the Japanese lemon market. California and Arizona produce 85% of all the lemons in the U.S. About 97% of all lemons sold in Japan are grown in America.

“We’re the highest-quality lemon producer in the world, and Japan likes fresh produce,” Quarles says.

Quarles, who has been to Japan numerous times on business, speaks knowledgeably of the Japanese market and the desire for quality among Japanese consumers.

“Here in California, our produce in the supermarkets looks outstanding, but still it’s not quite the same as in Japan,” Quarles says. “There, the produce looks so perfect, the first time I saw it I truly thought it was artificial.”

He says the quest for aesthetically perfect produce is cultural.

“It’s part of the culture in Japan that you eat first with your eyes, that’s why food presentation there is such a work of art,” Quarles says. “They truly go after the highest food quality available. That makes Japan a very natural market for Ventura County lemons.”

Citrus fruit can grow anywhere from 30 degrees north latitude to 30 degrees south latitude. In the United States, virtually every county within these parameters grows citrus. They are primarily orange producers, of one variety or another.

“We happen to be about the farthest north in the zone; the warm days and cold nights bring out the color in the citrus fruits,” Quarles says. “That’s why California and Arizona oranges and lemons are aesthetically perfect--almost.

“Very high quality lemons in Ventura County--a notch above some of our other growing areas,” Quarles says. Historically, foreign imports have had difficulty penetrating Japan’s closed markets. But with lemons, Japan made an exception because there is no domestic competition to speak of.

Japan has not been able to produce lemons of quality. Farmers produce a very high quality mandarin orange, known as mikan, but they do not produce lemons at all. “I’m sure they’ve tried it. They just don’t do well,” Quarles says.

Oba says consumers wary of foreign imports have begun buying lemons raised on the southern islands of Kyushu and Shizuoka. But those puny lemons cannot compare to the plump, yellow, picture-perfect California lemons.

“They are small and green,” says Oba, who buys only the California variety.