Agriculture in San Joaquin, CA dropped 14% last year
Falling prices for major crops like almonds and walnuts are partly to blame, along with spring rainstorms that devastated last year’s cherry crop, and the drought which still was hanging on at the time.
“A lot of things went wrong last year,” county Agricultural Commissioner Tim Pelican said.
But context is important. As steep as the recent two-year decline has been, it follows record-high values earlier this decade — a “bubble” of sorts that may not have been sustainable over the long term.
Overall, farm revenue has dropped from $3.2 billion in 2014 to $2.3 billion in 2016. But farming still is the county’s top business and will be “for a long time to come,” said Jeff Michael, director of the Center for Business and Policy Research at University of the Pacific.
Read more at recordnet.com
