California’s citrus industry is facing unprecedented challenges, including strong headwinds on both the import and export side of the trade equation, where imports now exceed exports. Adding to these difficulties, are the rising cost of production, labor challenges and the threat of pests like huanglongbing (HLB) and the Asian citrus psyllid.
California Citrus Quality Council President Jim Cranney says the organization is focused on facilitating changes that will help move the industry forward and weather some of these challenges.
CCQC’s mission is to represent the California citrus industry in response to issues at the state, national and international levels, which means everything from quarantine matters to technical assistance to international compliance to understanding regulations with trading partners and assisting with reducing barriers to market access.
But recently, Cranney says the CCQC has been doing a lot of work, providing input and comments to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, focused on the trade front.
“I came to California in 2008 as the new president at CCQC, and at that time it was all about exports. The industry was very outward looking,” Cranney says.
Much has changed in the 17 years since he took the helm at CCQC, including both increased competition on the domestic citrus market and, in some cases, crippling tariffs on the export side.
“Recently, we’ve seen more difficulties on the export side and a lot of imports coming into the U.S., so much so that, regrettably, I would say when we look at trade policy, we’re paying a lot of attention on the import side,” he says.
Family Farms Under Pressure
California lemon growers are increasingly facing competition from lower-priced imports to the U.S.
“Lemons from Argentina have been a big problem,” Cranney says. “APHIS granted market access to lemons coming in from Argentina, I think it was around 2016 or 2017, and from 2018 until this past year, we’ve seen an increase from approximately 8,000 metric tons to 93,000 metric tons in that short period of time. That’s been an enormous increase in supply, and quite honestly, there’s a big differential in our cost of production as compared to Argentina.”
“It’s very difficult for our industry to meet the kind of prices that are coming in from Argentina,” he adds.
In addition to higher labor costs compared to Argentina, California also has more stringent regulatory requirements, Cranney says.
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangered Species Act? You can multiply that by 10 with requirements that are necessary in the state of California,” he says. “The regulatory costs for producers here are tremendous, so we feel the playing field is unfair for California citrus producers.”
While the CCQC continues to advocate for the industry, Cranney says it can only do the best it can to meet lower prices in the marketplace.
“Returns back to growers have been lower, and it’s been a very difficult situation for lemon growers,” he says.
For some California citrus growers, the situation is reaching a tipping point.
“Farms are under pressure,” he says. “Some of these are family farms that have been in the family for generations, and you can imagine it’s not an easy decision for these farming operations to just say, ‘We’re going to give up now.’ A lot of this is happening in places in California, where development is a real possibility and there’s potential in the next two to three years, if this continues, we’ll start to see farms coming out of production and just going into shopping malls.”
Cranney says CCQC has been bringing its message of an unlevel playing field to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.
“We have been saying that we’re not so much upset that Argentina has access to the U.S. market, but we expect them to operate in a more responsible way in terms of marketing their fruit in the U.S.,” he says. “We haven’t gone to the level of documenting dumping on their part, but if you look at market conditions, it’s also very difficult for them to be selling at cost of production.
“We have questions about how rational it is for producers in Argentina to be dumping product into the U.S. market, when they’re not making money either,” he adds. “Our industry’s opinion is that the U.S. government should put a limit on the amount [of lemons] coming in from Argentina to protect the industry from predatory behavior on the part of Argentine interest, and we’ve been advocating for the industry along those lines with USTR.”
A lot of this is happening in places in California, where development is a real possibility and there’s potential in the next two to three years, if this continues, we’ll start to see farms coming out of production and just going into shopping malls.
While the U.S. government has imposed 10% tariffs on products from Argentina imported into the U.S., Cranney says it’s not likely to have measurable impact.
“Ten percent isn’t likely to make a huge difference,” he says. “It will deter and restrict some imports coming in, we’ll have to wait and see by how much, but probably we need a tariff quite a bit higher than 10% to really get to the level where there’s not real disruption in the marketplace.”
Opportunities and Challenges in China
When it comes to exports, California citrus has long eyed China as a market with tremendous potential for growth.
“If you look at what has happened in China over the last 10 to 15 years, they’ve had one of the largest migrations of people in rural areas to cities in human history,” Cranney says.
China’s urban population in 2024 was approximately 943.5 million, according to Statista. To put that in perspective, the population of New York City was 8.5 million in 2025.
“When you look at it in those terms, and you’re a produce supplier or food producer, you don’t have to think too long and hard to know that demand is going to increase substantially when you have people coming out of rural areas and into a city where they can’t produce their own food,” he says. “Because of that, China has always been viewed by the industry as a really interesting top growth market.”
While the California citrus industry had been exporting to China, Cranney says that with the trade disruptions from about 2018 to around 2020, California citrus saw its exports decrease to the country by 28% to 30%.
“China took retaliatory measures and increased tariffs substantially,” he says. “And since then, we’ve been operating with tariffs that are in a neighborhood of about 46%.”
Steep tariffs have made California far less competitive in China’s citrus market, where suppliers from other countries have a large advantage as far as price.
“That has been an ongoing problem because China hasn’t really reduced those retaliatory tariffs,” says Cranney, who adds that COVID-19 further exacerbated the situation with supply chain disruptions and shipping delays that are less than ideal with a perishable product.
“It’s been a challenge for the industry to overcome those difficulties, and there’s still a lot of residual problems from COVID in the supply chain that have not been completely resolved,” he says. “We’re still faced with delays that make it difficult to make customers happy halfway around the world.”
If China would lower tariffs, giving California citrus growers greater access, Cranney says, “it is a very promising market.”
“But if we can’t, then we feel like we’re stuck in the same boat as many other types of producers going into China,” he says. “We hear a lot about soybeans, for instance. China has always been a very big market for soybean producers, and we also hear about different government programs or bailouts, if you will, that will compensate those growers for loss of market and financial difficulties.
“We would just expect that California citrus growers also would be included in any type of market assistance programs along those lines, including purchases that the government may make for [federally funded] food programs or other types of government programs that can utilize citrus from California.”
Cranney says that as CCQC and the citrus industry continue to navigate these difficulties, there is some good news on the horizon.
“It looks like we have a good crop coming up this year, with probably a little bit larger size fruit,” he says. “Some markets like larger fruit, and that is a bright spot for the industry.”
