Santa Clara County farmers produced nearly $248 million worth of
crops and livestock last year
– a 2.7 percent drop from 2007, according to a report from the
California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Santa Clara County farmers produced nearly $248 million worth of crops and livestock last year – a 2.7 percent drop from 2007, according to a report from the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Despite the drop in revenue and a depressed real estate market, nursery crops – such as bedding plants, shrubs, trees and other landscaping stand-bys – led the pack in 2008, bringing in $87.3 million in revenue, according to the report. This was a slight decrease from 2007, when the indoor- and outdoor-grown crops totaled $87.9 million.
“(Developers) were not installing as much landscaping (in 2008), but we have had a renewed focus on home and vegetable gardening,” Santa Clara County Deputy Agricultural Commissioner Kevin O’Day said.
In addition, residents are paying more attention to keeping their grounds nice and doing their own landscaping because they are vacationing less, O’Day said. This kept the crop from falling more precipitously.
There was also a renewed focus on garlic. The acreage harvested throughout the county more than doubled to nearly 300 acres between 2007 and 2008. Garlic king Don Christopher of Christopher Ranch owns about 200 acres – in addition to another 200 in San Juan Bautista and Hollister – and attributed the increase in harvest space to a lack of water in the state’s Central Valley, where the ranch also grows garlic.
“It’s harder for us to get growers to grow for us over there. We have to go where there’s water, and there’s water here,” said Christopher, the county’s pre-eminent garlic grower. George Chiala Farms in Morgan Hill and LJB Farms in San Martin also contributed to the garlic harvest, which was valued at more than $1 million in 2008.
O’Day also pointed to county farmers’ use of “very sophisticated irrigation systems,” which use drippage rather than flooding – a technique relied on more by farmers in the Central Valley – he said. While technology can go a long way, weather and ecosystems are the ultimate factors.
Take cherries, which saw a 33 percent increase in yield between 2007 and 2008 and an increase in value from $6.5 million to $8 million over the same period, according to the report. Robust cherry blooms have specific “winter chill requirements” and many varieties also depend on honey bees for pollination as well as good weather around harvesting time – all of which seemed to work out well in 2008, O’Day said. Diligent oversight when it comes to timed pesticide sprays, irrigation tweaks and temperature monitoring also helped the county’s cherry farmers, O’Day and farmers said. Farmers harvesting prunes, peppers, walnuts and other fruits and nuts experienced similar good luck.
“We’ve had three good years in a row for cherries, but that has never happened in the last 30 years,” said Christopher, who hires fellow farmer Ralph Santos to oversee his cherry farms.
Mushrooms were the second most valuable crop in the county, totaling nearly $58 million – up from $57.7 million in 2007, according to the report. Bell peppers were the third most valuable crop, with $15.5 million in revenue, according to the report. The average pepper yield also jumped from 27.9 tons per acre in 2007 to 32.5 tons per acre last year.
On the other side of the production aisle were beans, apricots and broccoli, which all saw acreage increase while production fell. Total vegetable acreage rose 5.5 percent while total revenue declined about the same amount. Bushberries and strawberries took hard hits with fewer acres and a decrease in revenue from $2.7 million to $1.7 million. Livestock also dropped from $8.4 million to $6.7 million.
Vegetable and flower seed crops, however, saw an increase in acreage and also revenue, with $1.4 million last year compared to $870,000 in 2007, according to the report. Timber production, which took in $517,800, also saw production shoot up by 52 percent.
Since 1958, the county’s total farming acreage has fallen from about 349,000 to less than 230,000 last year, according to the report.
