Why Sacramento County farmers sold $60 million less in crops last year than in 2018

It’s not easy growing greens.

Sacramento County farms produced $460.4 million-worth of crops last year, down 11.9% from the $520.6 million accumulated in 2018, according to the county’s 2019 Crop And Livestock Report released Tuesday.

Sales of all but one of the county’s 10 best-selling crops decreased last year. Nursery stock, the lone exception, netted $35.1 million in 2019 after bringing in $31.9 million in 2018, overtaking poultry and pears to become the county’s third-most valuable commodity.

Wine grapes remain Sacramento County’s most-sold crop by far, accounting for 38% of all sales. While some of those grapes fueled Clarksburg’s burgeoning wine industry just across the Yolo County line, most of the 316,075 tons produced went outside the region, as is the case with nearly all crops.

The county’s most valuable agricultural commodities last year were:

• Wine grapes ($175.4 million)
• Milk ($52.3 million)
• Nursery stock ($35.1 million)
• Poultry ($35.1 million)
• Pears ($24.3 million)
• Aquaculture including fish, crustaceans, mollusks and aquatic plants ($16.2 million)
• Cattle and calves ($16 million)
• Alfalfa ($15.4 million)
• Rice ($12.7 million)
• Field corn grown to feed livestock ($12.3 million)

Each crop’s monetary yield is expressed as gross production value, which multiples total output by sales prices but does not include subtractions for growing expenses. It therefore does not signify net profits or losses for growers.

Much of the lost value stems from weak sales prices last year. Farmers produced 1,800 tons more pears in 2019 than 2018, for example, but they were worth $296.90 per ton instead of the prior year’s $468 per ton.

Most of the best-selling crops stayed the same as years past, but a 50-year comparison shows how much local agriculture and national tastes have changed over the decades. Fruit and nut crops accounted for just 11.5% of Sacramento County’s economic yield in 1969; in 2019, it was 46.3%, thanks in large part to wine sales.

Cattle and calves were by far the county’s most valuable commodity back then but ranked seventh last year. The tomatoes for which the region was once known — Sacramento County’s fifth-most valuable crop in 1969 — are now grown so infrequently they fall alongside 18 other vegetables in the report’s “miscellaneous” category.

This story was originally published November 19, 2020 at 9:53 AM.