Softer milk prices helped pull Tulare County’s gross ag value down 8% in 2023. Still, Agricultural Commissioner Tom Tucker points to the success of farmers to move significant volumes of products to export markets.
Tulare’s gross farm receipts fell to $7.86 billion on a year that saw a mixed bag of commodity price changes, most notably, the price dairy farmers received for their milk. The average milk price on the Federal Milk Marketing Order last year was 26.6% lower than the previous year.
Dairy farmers in 2023 saw their milk checks fall by $7 per hundredweight (cwt.) from the previous year, dropping the value of milk to just over $2 billion on over 10.55 billion pounds of milk produced. This is noteworthy because even as dairy numbers decline in Tulare and statewide, the county’s milk production has remained stable for decades.
Tulare County consistently produces about one-fourth of California’s total milk production, a volume equal to the annual production of dairies in Minnesota, the seventh largest dairy state in the nation.
Though Tulare County boasts a diverse cornucopia of products, ranging from fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, and livestock, it’s single-largest component remains milk production, which can commonly drive the county’s gross agricultural output.
“Tulare County’s agricultural strength is based on the diversity of the crops produced,” said Tucker in his annual report.
The per-head price of cattle and calves rose by almost 19% as the number of head sold in 2023 was statistically unchanged.
While kiwifruit, lemons, nectarines, olives, and persimmons saw notable increases in grower prices, the price paid for oranges, blueberries, tangerines, plums, pluots, and pecans, were all down significantly in varying degrees.
Top citrus county
Tulare County is the top citrus county by acreage in the state, with over 141,000 acres of various citrus varieties commercially grown. Most of that citrus are navel and Valencia oranges, which last year saw 34.5% and 13% lower prices, respectively.
Popular nut crops including pistachios and almonds each grow in harvested acreage and in total production in 2023. Pistachio prices to the grower were down on higher yields as almond prices rebounded slightly on a modest average yield increase.
Almond and pistachio acreages were up 3.5% and 4.6%, respectively, in 2023.
While the average yield in almonds was up slightly to 2,400 pounds per acre, pistachio yields for their on-year production averaged 3,140 pounds per acre. Grower prices for pistachios were down 14.5%, while almond prices began to show a slow rebound after several years of unprofitable returns. The average price for almond nuts was up just over 2% compared to 2022.
Exports
Oranges and pistachios are Tulare County’s two largest exports, with over 31% of oranges, and over 29% of pistachios destined for world markets, according to the annual crop report. About 12% of the county’s grape crop is exported, of which about half moves to Mexico.
China and South Korea are the county’s two top destinations for food products, Tucker said. Pistachios remain China’s largest purchase, with over 2.2 million cartons of nuts from Tulare County. Korea is a large consumer of California oranges, purchasing over three million cartons of oranges from Tulare County alone. Japan is another large consumer of Tulare County oranges. Last year over 1.2 million cartons of oranges were shipped from Tulare County to Japan.
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