August 13,2013

What Happened To King Cotton?

Kern County held its second place position as the nation’s number two county for crop production in 2013 leaving next door Tulare County comfortably number one. Kern’s crop value came in at $6.8 billion – up 6% from 2012, with results  announced this week. But Tulare County’s lead was way too much to catch up to at $7.8 billion – ahead of Fresno County at number three with $6.4 billion.Fresno has been number one for years.

With three years of drought Fresno County suffered a decline in 2013 due in large part to its parched westside and that regions’ water woes. Unlike Fresno County, Tulare County and Kern have either no or less westside crop region.

Tulare County’s strong position was based not just on milk  which saw much better prices in 2013 vs 2012 but an explosion of higher values in the nut and fruit sector. Exports made the difference.

Kern saw some of that as well as walnuts logged gains in both acreage and per-ton value rising around $800 million.

Kern remains the top grape producer in the state with a crop value climbing more than $200 million vs 2012.Almonds were the county’s top crop followed by milk,citrus and cattle.

King Cotton looked more like a pauper than a prince in 2013  with acreage down only 771 compared to nearly 5000 acres in 2012, 32,000 in 2010 and 237,000 acres in 1990. Earlier the county saw about 300,00o acres of cotton that has almost all been replaced – mostly with permanent plantings.

 

Tulare County Citrus Acreage Grows

USDA’s annual Citrus Acreage Report shows Tulare County sports more than half the state’s navel orange crop in 2104 with 67,560 acres of bearing trees and 2083 young nonbearing trees. That is nearly two thirds of the state’s new plantings are happening in Tulare County. In the fast growing mandarin category Tulare County has 13,630 acres of trees including 1162 nonbearing. The report says  there were 1925 acres of nonbearing trees planted from 2012-2014 statewide so most of the new plantings of this variety are happening in the county as well. Statewide there are now 46,272 acres of mandarins (compared to 29,000 acres in 2006), ahead of the Valencia orange acreage now  at 33,985 acres. Statewide Valencia acreage has stayed flat since 2006.

In lemons Ventura County leads with 17,148 acres and Tulare County second at 6069 acres but again, growing faster with over a thousand  acres of young trees planted in the past three years compared to only 500 acres in Ventura County.

Just what acreage we will end up with in Tulare County in 2014 due to the drought  and lack of surface water delivery this year may change the numbers here some fear as a substantial number of groves are pulled.