Billions in Crops, Vanishing Farm Returns

Drive down any country road between Ventura and Santa Paula and the fields look as lush as ever — strawberry rows marching up the hillsides, lemon groves heavy with fruit, celery crowding the rich coastal soil. But according to the Farm Bureau of Ventura County, that postcard view is quietly hiding an economic crisis unfolding beneath it.

The county's agricultural production value hit a record $2.4 billion in 2025, a number that drew plenty of headlines when the annual Crop & Livestock Report was released. But tucked inside that same report were production-cost estimates that tell a far darker story: for several of the county's biggest crops, farmers spent more to grow their harvests than they earned selling them.

The Ventura Breeze, reporting on the Farm Bureau's analysis, found that strawberries — Ventura County's top crop, which generated $807 million in gross revenue last year — actually cost an estimated $8 million more to produce than they brought in. Lemons fared worse: roughly $203.5 million in production costs against $181.7 million in gross revenue, a shortfall of nearly $21.8 million.

For a county where agriculture is not just an industry but an identity — where farm stands, labor crews and packinghouses anchor towns like Santa Paula, Fillmore and Oxnard — those numbers land hard.

An 80% Collapse in What Farmers Keep

Using the production-cost data included in Agricultural Commissioner Korinne Bell's 2025 Crop & Livestock Report, the Farm Bureau estimates that net returns across the county's major commodity groups have fallen approximately 80% since 2015.

That figure deserves a moment of pause. It doesn't mean farmers are growing 80% less — in fact, countywide irrigated acreage has actually increased about 3% over the past decade, according to the Farm Bureau. What's shrinking is the slice of revenue that survives after seeds, water, labor, fuel, fertilizer, equipment and compliance costs are paid.

In other words, Ventura County's fields are as full as ever. The margin behind them is disappearing.

The decision by Commissioner Bell to include production-cost estimates in the annual report was itself significant. For years, the county's crop reports have been judged by a single headline number — gross production value — that critics have long said obscures the financial realities of farming. Adding cost data gives residents, policymakers and lenders a truer picture of an industry that employs thousands of local workers and shapes the region's landscape, economy and open space.

"The Landscape Is Hiding What's Happening Underneath It"

"Ventura County agriculture still looks healthy from the road," said Louise Lampara, CEO of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County. "The fields are planted, the orchards are green, the crops are growing. And that's exactly the problem: the landscape is hiding what's happening underneath it."

Lampara's framing cuts against a familiar local narrative. For decades, Ventura County's biggest agricultural fear has been sprawl — housing tracts and warehouse parks chewing up prime farmland, some of the most productive soil in the world. Voters have repeatedly backed measures like SOAR to protect open space and keep land in farming.

But the Farm Bureau argues the threat has evolved. "We didn't lose ag land to a developer," Lampara said. "We're losing farming to policy. And the resulting economics show a spiraling collapse."

The organization points to rising production costs layered on top of regulatory and policy pressures — water restrictions, labor rules, permitting requirements — as the forces squeezing growers from both directions. The economics are detailed further in the group's outreach campaign at economicsoftheacre.org.

Why the Record Number Misleads

The $2.4 billion record is real, and it matters. Gross production value reflects what the county's roughly 100,000 acres of irrigated farmland produced at market prices, and a strong headline figure can buoy related businesses — equipment dealers, trucking firms, packing and cooling operations — across the region.

But gross value is a revenue number, not a profit number. A strawberry grower who posts $807 million in countywide sales and $815 million in costs contributed handsomely to the local economy while losing money on every acre. Sustained long enough, that math forces hard choices: shift to higher-margin crops if any exist, cut back on plantings, lease out the land — or sell.

That's the quiet danger in the Farm Bureau's analysis. Farmland doesn't disappear overnight. It fades, one unprofitable season at a time, until the day the fields finally do go fallow or get converted. By then, the loss was years in the making.

What It Means for Ventura

For Ventura residents, the stakes go beyond farm-gate economics. Agriculture is one of the county's largest employers, particularly in farmworker communities across the Oxnard Plain and the Santa Clara River Valley. It maintains the greenbelt views and rural character that help define quality of life here. Every percentage point of decline in farm viability ripples into jobs, local food supply and the fate of the open space residents have spent decades protecting.

The Farm Bureau, a member-driven organization that advocates for farmers, ranchers and agricultural businesses countywide, is using the new data to make the case that policy decisions — on water, labor and land-use regulation — need to be weighed against their cumulative cost to growers, not just their intended benefits.

Whether local and state officials respond remains to be seen. But the next time you drive past those impossibly green fields along Highway 126 or the 101, it's worth remembering what the Farm Bureau says they're concealing: a record-breaking industry that, for many of the families who work it, is quietly running on empty.

This story draws on reporting by the [Ventura Breeze](https://venturabreeze.com/billions-in-crops-vanishing-farm-returns/) and analysis by the Farm Bureau of Ventura County based on the Ventura County 2025 Crop & Livestock Report.