California Ag By the Numbers: What Does It Mean for Tech?

Pure commodities are pure numbers. From seeds to crops to harvests to ingredients to shelves to forks — agricultural products are all about the numbers.

Ag and food tech developers must know and understand their commodity customers’ trends. Our friends at the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) publish an annual and fascinating statistical review of the prior fiscal year. Yes, that is the most recent period available.

The numbers are legion and cross-referenced to a mind-numbing degree. California produces 400 commodities. Most other states have a dominant crop and perhaps three or four others worth tracking.

Insights culled for your product development and marketing:

1. Drought and other negative drivers influenced 2015-16. What is termed “farmgate value” declined by nearly 17 percent from the prior year to $47.1 billion on 77,500 farms. All three top crops tumbled — dairy dumped 32.8 percent to $6.2 billion, while almonds dropped almost 28 percent to $5.3 billion and grapes shriveled 5.4 percent to $5 billion.
   
   
2. But California remained the No. 1 ag state, generating 13 percent of the U.S. total. This is nearly more than No. 2, Iowa, and No. 3, Texas, combined. Top California counties were Tulare, Kern and Fresno, which all approached $7 billion farmgate. Next came Monterey, Stanislaus, Merced, San Joaquin, Ventura, Kings and Madera.
   
   
3. Which farmers are the big guys? Nearly 27 percent exceeded $100,000 in sales. It’s interesting to note the average California farm, at 329 acres, is smaller than the 441-acre national average. Irrigated ag land was up 1.6 percent valued at $12,900 per acre … but consider Napa, where primo wine land can be $200,000. Dry ag land was $4,300, paradoxically up 7.5 percent.
   
   
4. Growth crops — those with the largest percentage gains — were eggs, lettuce, broccoli, lemons and carrots. (Lemons and all citrus are iffy, though, with the onslaught of the “dread HLB disease.”) Loser crops were chili peppers, pistachios, sunflowers (not-for-oil), corn grain, cotton, hay, apples and apricots.
   
   
5. By acreage, the most planted crops were: hay and alfalfa, 1.2 million; almonds, 890,000; grapes, 856,000; rice, 421,000; tomatoes, 326,000; and walnuts, 300,000. But don’t discount berries, which probably have one of the highest yields per acre, at farmgate value of $438 million for 55,000 acres.
   
   
6. It might surprise you where all this California Fresh went: Europe got $3.9 billion, Canada received $3.5 billion, China $1.7 billion, Japan $1.6 billion and Mexico, $1.1 billion.

My next blog will focus on the numbers behind the most likely No. 1 crop of 2018-19. It’s a crop not even mentioned above and it’s one that could, in its first year, achieve a farmgate triple that of dairy, almonds or grapes.