A story in Ag Alert, the news magazine for the California Farm Bureau, written by Christine Souza recently wrote how Farm Bureau President Shannon Douglass thought state farmers had reached a “tipping point.”

The question was raised during an Agri-Pulse Food & Ag Issues Summit held in West in Sacramento in June and referred to how farmers are “grappling with higher costs and challenges related to water, labor, regulations and trade.”

Souza is a good writer and over the years I’ve learned to respect her reporting and insight.

“When we talk about the things that are keeping me up at night, it really comes down to what is going to keep our members in business,” Douglass said, according to Souza.

Citing the most recent U.S. Census of Agriculture, she noted how the state has lost 20% of its farms during the past decade, with a disproportionate number of them being small and medium in size. This loss, Douglass said, is evidence that agriculture in the Golden State is at a tipping point.

Pointing to the rising regulatory pressures facing farmers, Douglass cited a regulatory cost study released early this year by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The study, commissioned last year by the Monterey County Farm Bureau, found regulatory and compliance costs for Salinas Valley lettuce growers increased nearly 1,400% in less than 20 years.

Cal Poly professor Lynn Hamilton, who prepared the study, said she found the cost of environmental, labor and food safety compliance was $1,600 per acre, an increase of 63.7% from 2017. Regulatory costs are now 12.6% of total production costs, while farm-gate values for lettuce increased 0.37% from 2017 to 2024, the study found.

Regarding trade and tariffs, Alexi Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Almond Alliance, said China was the No. 1 export market for the state’s almonds until 2018, when shipments dropped sharply after retaliatory tariffs were implemented.

CalMatters columnist Dan Walters, who formerly wrote for the Sacramento Bee, picked up on this and noted in a column that while California is still No.1 in agricultural production among the states, “generating about $60 billion a year, other sectors, such as technology, health care and logistics now play much larger roles in the state’s economy” which has further diminished ag.

I agree with Walters, who also wrote that ag leaders “see this year as one of the industry’s most trying periods, beset by economic and political factors that could significantly reduce production.”

But my observations are somewhat different. I don’t question the growing number of regulations that beset farmers. My concern centers around the ability to attract reliable labor — those people capable of working in the fields, picking the produce, or managing the land for owners — as well as the tariffs imposed on other countries by President Trump, which will raise the cost of equipment and parts as well as commodities.

While regulations, labor and water challenges continue, there are opportunities for farmers, including automation and other technologies to increase efficiency and reduce costs, according to Souza.

And that’s true. Non-harvest tasks such as laser weeders are filling some of the gaps. So, too, are automated harvesters, driverless vehicles and even driverless tractors (which are prohibited in California, even though they can operate in some other states). But it’s not enough to offset the losses.

What does all of this mean? Simply put, the cost of producing food — even in the top agricultural-producing state in the nation — is going to climb and that will have devastating effects on not just growers and those providing services to growers, but on state and national consumers.

Jim Smith is the former editor of The Daily Democrat, retiring in 2021 after a 27-year career at the paper.