Every year farmers harvest avocados from the 62,000 acres of avocado orchards in California. Additional crops in the area include Valencia oranges,Navel oranges,lemons, limes, tangerines, tangelos, grapefruit, eggs, and nursery plantings.

The wildfires of the last few days have destroyed more than one third of those trees. More than 20,000 acres of avocado orchards have burned. If the trees were destroyed, it will take years for the replanted orchards to bear avocados again.

The avocado industry is worth about $276 million annually, said state Department of Agriculture spokesman Jay Van Rein.

"If they can survive the fire, they can still harvest later," Van Rein said.

But if trees are lost, growers will have to replant orchards and wait years to harvest.

"We know we've lost thousands of acres of avocados. That will be one of the big losses," Jay Van Rein, spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said of the avocados in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"The bigger loss is the tree itself, not the fruit. These are not row crops, where you can just plant them again and have a harvest in four months," said Van Rein. "The trees have to be grown again from seed and it is going to be several years before they are productive again."

Many of the trees have avocados on them because the fruit will stay ripe for months, he said.

California produces about 84% of the avocados consumed in this country and had expected a record crop worth over $350 million this year.

Other agriculture crops damaged by the fires include citrus groves, egg farms, and plant nurseries. Several chicken houses are known to have burned and the fire is now in areas that produce Valencia and Navel oranges, as well as other citrus crops....

"We know of at least one (farm)that had a couple of (chicken) houses that burned," Dawn Nielsen, deputy agriculture commissioner for San Diego County, said of the egg farms.

"The areas that the fires are getting into today are some of our primary citrus growing areas. We grow Valencia and navels (oranges)," said Nielsen.

Many family farms in the region also produce lemons, limes, grapefruit, tangerines and tangelos, said Van Rein.

It will be days before the burned areas will be safe enough for officials and farmers to return to assess the losses.... It is hoped that some of the orchards will only have been burned around the edges and that some trees have survived.