Every year, Ventura County, Calif., releases its crop and livestock report, but the latest version includes production-cost data for the first time. Louise Lampara, CEO of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County, says this level of reporting is a first for the county — and perhaps the state.
“Most crop reports in the past have simply reported the gross numbers, and what we’re seeing here is that the gross numbers are creating a false public perception that farmers are rich,” she says. “They’re not having money problems.”
The numbers tell a different story. While the production value of Ventura County agricultural products is $2.4 billion, growers of the county’s top crop actually lost money.
The Farm Bureau of Ventura County created a website — economicsoftheacre.org — to illustrate the impact of local agriculture as well as the startling costs of production.
The True Cost of Top Crop
Strawberries, Ventura County’s top crop, grossed $807 million in 2025. However, production costs reached $815.1 million, leaving strawberry growers with an $8.1 million net loss. Lemons, a staple of the county’s agricultural heritage, generated $181.7 million in gross returns but cost $203.5 million to cultivate, resulting in a $21.8 million out-of-pocket loss for growers.
“Our top crop is bankrupting farmers, and that’s a completely different picture,” Lampara says.
Lisa Tate, a sixth-generation citrus and avocado grower in Ventura County, says she wasn’t necessarily surprised by the findings, as she is experiencing them.
“The numbers were worse than I thought they were,” she says.
Tate says she originally thought she was losing 4 cents for every dollar that came in on lemons, but the figures showed it was 12 cents for every dollar.
“Twelve cents doesn’t seem like a lot [to lose],” she says. “But let’s say you’re bringing in $1 million — $120,000 is bad. You can’t lose that every year.”
Shifting the Public Perception
Lampara says she hopes the website and these startling figures will start moving the conversation toward the stark economic realities facing specialty crop growers in Ventura County, as well as across the country.
“What you track is what you can change, and so if we’re reporting on gross only, that is not tracking the real economic health of the industry in our region,” she says. “The real number is what’s on that website regarding net returns, and it paints a completely different picture.”
Tate adds, “The moral of the story is we’re not competitive internationally.”
From there, she hopes the conversation can also look at some of the root causes to the current economic state of specialty crops.
“Then from that, we can start talking about how do we fix this, and a lot of that is going to have to come from policy changes, and you can’t get the attention to change policy if we’re talking about the wrong thing,” she says.
Uncounted Community Values
The crisis facing specialty crop growers points to a systemic valuation problem in local agriculture. The issue, Lampara explains, is that even as farmers voice concerns about rising regulatory costs, their fields remain planted, cultivated and harvested.
“What the average person [in] the public sees is that farmers keep complaining they’re being harmed, but ‘they look fine to me,’” she says. “By the time ... we get to a point where the public notices, ‘Wait a minute, all these fields are no longer planted’ — it’s too late.”
Lampara points to Ventura County avocados as a key example. Consumers rarely research crop origins or consider the community benefits of buying local, such as wildfire mitigation from irrigated orchards and natural flood protection.
“We don’t talk about the value that provides,” she says. “We really need to start shifting the conversation to what is that worth to people.”
Tate adds that consumers and growers must help retailers recognize the value of promoting locally and nationally grown produce.
“We have the safest food safety rules, we have the best environmental rules, we have the best labor safety rules — we have the best of everything, but those are costly,” she says. “How do we compete when we have these additional expenses that I think we all agree are good? There’s a cost to it.”
Tate says that’s especially when countries that export fresh produce to the U.S. don’t have the same requirements or regulations.
“It’s not really fair that if we’re required to meet all of these regulations and these labor practices that other countries don’t have to meet those, ... but they’re allowed to import their food,” she says.
To address these disparities, Tate suggests targeted seasonal tariffs on competing imports or subsidies to support domestic growers and safeguard food security. Without intervention, she warns, rising costs and diminishing returns will drive more family farms out of business.
“I think it was in 2025 that the farm foreclosures went up 46%,” she says. “That’s a startling number, and that’s going to continue until something happens.”
