Ventura County Counted the Costs. Have You Counted Yours, Block by Block?

By the Thombar team

tl;dr: Ventura County’s 2025 crop report did something a crop report normally does not: it set production costs next to gross value. Strawberries, the county’s top crop, cost about $1.01 to produce for every dollar they brought in, and lemons cost about $1.12. The county average is not your farm, so the useful move this fall is to run the same math on your own blocks before you plant, sign or renew.

What happened

On June 23, the Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office presented its 2025 Crop and Livestock Report, titled “Making Cents of Agricultural Production,” to the Board of Supervisors (The Acorn). The headline number looked healthy: $2.4 billion in agricultural production, up 4% from 2024. Strawberries came in at nearly $808 million, up 14%, and lemons at nearly $182 million, up 54%.

The report then split expenses into six categories: labor, land, inputs, plant care, services and regulatory compliance. “This year’s report captures the industry through an agricultural business lens,” Agricultural Commissioner Korinne Bell said (The Acorn). For strawberries, the cost per dollar of revenue broke down as 45 cents for labor, 18 cents for land, 20 cents for irrigation and packaging, 12 cents for services, 3 cents for crop care and 3 cents for regulatory fees, tax, insurance and compliance, for a total of $1.01 (Ojai Valley News).

The Farm Bureau of Ventura County’s Economics of the Acre campaign, built on the county’s figures, puts it plainly: strawberries earned $807.0 million and cost $815.1 million, a shortfall of $8.1 million, and lemons earned $181.7 million against $203.5 million in costs, a shortfall of $21.8 million (Economics of the Acre). The campaign also reports that net return per acre across four major crop groups is down 80% compared with historic levels, and down 84% for vegetables. Avocados, the county’s second crop at $241 million, returned about 5 cents per dollar (The Acorn).

“Any business can operate at a loss for so long,” Bell said, adding, “I’ve never seen so much fallow land out there” (The Acorn). Farm Bureau of Ventura County CEO Louise Lampara said some growers are “quite literally paying for the privilege to grow food.”

Why it matters to your P&L and cash

A county report is an average across every grower, variety, field and marketing arrangement. Some growers in that average made money; others lost far more than 1 cent per dollar. The report’s real value is the format: revenue and cost on the same page, broken into categories a grower can compare against.

Three things in the Ventura numbers apply well beyond Ventura.

1. Gross went up and margin did not. Strawberry value rose 14% and lemon value rose 54%, yet both crops lost money at the county level. A bigger settlement check is not proof of a better year. The only way to know is cost per unit sold, by block.
2. Labor is the biggest line. Labor was the largest expense across all major crops (The Acorn). Economics of the Acre reports farm labor rising from $13.00 to $25.16 an hour over five years, a 94% increase. UC Davis economist Daniel Sumner’s 2024 comparison found harvest and packing labor made up about 54% of total farm cost for conventional strawberries (ARE Update).
3. Fixed costs arrive before any crop does. Economics of the Acre puts compliance fees at $316 an acre per year “before any crop is produced,” and irrigation water at $88.83 per acre-inch, up from $22.10 in 2007 (Economics of the Acre). Those costs hit cash in the months between planting and the first settlement.

Things to check this week:

• Cost per tray or carton by block, not per farm. Take each block’s total cost to date and divide by units sold or expected. A farm average can hide one block that is carrying the rest.
• Your last three settlements, line by line. Separate gross price from cooling, packaging, commission, freight and any other deductions. Compare the net per unit to your cost per unit. If the net is below cost, the size of the gross check does not change the answer.
• Labor cost per unit for each crew. Harvest pay structures vary. A per-tray harvest cost that looked fine at high yields can look very different on a light block.
• Cash from now to first harvest. For fall-planted crops, list every outflow (land rent, plants, fumigation, water, compliance fees, payroll) month by month until money comes back in. Note the lowest point and the date it hits.

Illustration (not data): a block with $100,000 an acre in total cost and 8,000 trays an acre has a cost of $12.50 a tray. If that block comes in 10% light, at 7,200 trays, the same cost works out to $13.89 a tray, $1.39 more on every tray, before any change in price. Yield risk and price risk land on the same line.

The bigger picture: what this signals for the next one to three seasons

The Ventura report is a local document, but the sources around it point in the same direction.

The squeeze is broad, not local. In a survey reported by The Packer in September 2026, 87% of specialty crop growers agreed that operating costs are rising much faster than crop prices (The Packer). An American Farm Bureau Federation analysis estimated an economic shortfall of about $276 million, or $4,525 an acre, for California conventional fresh-market strawberries using 2024 data, with costs “exceeding $110,000 per acre” (AFBF Market Intel). “It doesn’t matter if you are planting corn or planting strawberries, your input costs have increased dramatically,” said John Newton, AFBF’s vice president of public policy (Brownfield).

Margins depend on small assumptions. Sumner’s UC Davis analysis of 2024 costs found conventional strawberries returned about negative $1.52 a tray, or about negative $13,694 an acre, while organic returned about $1.22 a tray, because the organic price premium of $5 a tray outran the extra $2.25 a tray in cost (ARE Update). The same analysis shows how sensitive those results are: raising organic per-tray harvest labor by 15% adds about $1.00 a tray. When the margin is a dollar or two a tray, a single cost line can decide the year.

Lenders are pointing to block-level numbers. Farm Credit East’s 2026 apple outlook advises growers to “calculate break-even by block and variety, not only by farm average,” and states that “the current price environment is not sustainable without changes in costs, pack-out, demand or supply” (Farm Credit East). That is apple guidance from a Northeast lender, but the logic carries to any crop where costs are high and margins are thin.

Put together, the cited sources point to a few things to plan for over the next one to three seasons:

• More fallowing and crop switching. Ventura officials already describe more fallow ground, and some lemon growers are replacing orchards with avocados because of citrus disease pressure (The Acorn). Every planting decision becomes a cash decision first.
• Pressure on land and contract terms. Land is 18 cents of every strawberry dollar in Ventura. When the whole dollar is spoken for, rent, cooling fees and marketing deductions are the lines left to examine at renewal.
• Credit conversations built on unit economics. Farm Credit East’s guidance already points to break-even by block and variety. Cost per unit by block, set against net settlement prices, answers that question directly; gross sales alone do not.

The cited figures are averages. They do not show which farms or blocks are above or below break-even; only farm-level numbers can.

How to check your own exposure

Doing it yourself. A spreadsheet and a quiet afternoon go a long way:

1. List every block with acres, crop, variety and marketing arrangement.
2. Pull total costs for each block for the last full season: labor (including overtime and contractor charges), land, plants, water, fertilizer and crop protection, packaging, compliance fees and overhead allocated by acre.
3. Pull every settlement for each block and separate gross price from each deduction.
4. Divide cost by units sold to get cost per unit. Compare it with net price per unit after deductions.
5. Rank the blocks. For the bottom ones, decide now whether to change the plan, renegotiate terms or take them out before you commit next season’s cash.
6. Build a month-by-month cash plan from today to first harvest using the same numbers.

Steps two and three mean pulling data from several places: costs sit in QuickBooks, crew records and contractor invoices, and settlements arrive as PDFs on different schedules.

How Thombar helps. Thombar is a back office built for U.S. specialty crop growers. It tracks cost of production by crop and by block, and labor cost by crew and by block, with the overtime premium broken out. It reads settlements weekly and flags lines that disagree, breaks marketing agreement deductions down line by line against gross price, checks Farm Labor Contractor invoices line by line, and watches input costs such as diesel, fertilizer and packaging with alerts when a trend threatens margin. It also shows live USDA shipping point prices for your crop against your contract, and can package your numbers for your next contract negotiation. It connects directly to QuickBooks and accepts spreadsheet uploads. It does not replace your bookkeeper, CPA or lender; it gives them, and you, cleaner numbers.

For growers who have already used up their bank line, or whose bank cannot move fast enough before planting or harvest, Thombar Capital offers a revolving agricultural line of credit with a decision in 24 to 48 hours, one flat fee per draw known before you draw, and a soft credit pull only. It finances approved supplier purchases only and is subject to credit approval; amounts, terms and eligibility vary. If your bank can cover the need, use your bank. More background is in this earlier post on Thombar Capital.

This post is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Talk to your own advisors about your operation. Thombar Capital is powered by Kanmon Inc., California DFPI Finance Lenders Law License #60DBO-144925.

Sources

• The Acorn: County’s farm production hits $2.4 billion as growers face rising costs (July 2, 2026)
• Ojai Valley News: Ag commissioner warns of 2026 season
• Farm Bureau of Ventura County: Economics of the Acre (2026)
• Daniel A. Sumner, Organic and Non-Organic Strawberries: Comparing Farm Costs and Returns, ARE Update 29(4), Giannini Foundation, UC (2026)
• AFBF Market Intel: Specialty Crops Need Economic Aid, case studies (Jan. 6, 2026)
• The Packer: Soaring Operating Costs Threaten Survival of Specialty Crop Growers (Sept. 24, 2026)
• Brownfield Ag News: Specialty crop growers feeling the squeeze financially (July 24, 2026)
• Farm Credit East: 2026 Apple Outlook: High Supply with Tight Margins (May 19, 2026)