SALINAS >> Monterey County’s gross production value of its agricultural commodities increased 14.7% to nearly $5 billion, roaring back from a decline the previous year, with one crop standing out with a historic achievement of its own.

County of Monterey Agricultural Commissioner Juan Hidalgo released the 2024 Crop and Livestock Report on Tuesday, and noted that strawberries were the top crop again this year, valued at $1,039,220,000, a 15% increase over the previous year, and making history as the first commodity to achieve that figure.

“That is really incredible, quite an amazing historical achievement for our county,” said Hidalgo. “This is the first time in the county’s history where we have a single commodity reaching the $1 billion gross production value.”

Senior Vice President of the California Strawberry Commission Chris Christian said of that $1.039 billion, nearly $990 million of that goes back into the community providing jobs and purchasing services and goods that are critical to farming operations. Statewide, strawberry farming provides about 50,000 on-farm jobs, many of which are responsible for cultivating and harvesting. Strawberries contribute more than $4.2 billion to the California economy, while being grown on less than 1% of the state’s farmland.

“Specific to Monterey County, (it) is our largest producing county in the state reflecting the importance of the coastal climate,” said Christian. “The Monterey Bay Canyon provides the best climate in the world for growing strawberries and is a key component of our success here.”

Leaf lettuce, including Romaine and other leaf lettuce varieties, remained in the number two position of most valuable crops at $933,907,000, an increase of 19%, head lettuce maintained its number three ranking at $596,602,000, an increase of 21%, broccoli held on to number four at $578,870,000, a 23% increase, and moving up one position to number five is cauliflower at $228,112,000, a 21% increase.

Wine grapes saw a 21.8% decline in gross value at $152,251,000, due to oversupply and reduced demand, exacerbated by a 20% reduction in yields caused by unseasonably warm weather in late summer and October of last year. The commodity dropped three spots to number eight on the 2024 list.

Executive Director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau Norm Groot said the numbers show the resilience of the agricultural community here bouncing back from a pretty bad 2023 due to two disastrous floods.

“It shows we have a lot of strength in our diversity as you can see in the numbers of different crops,” said Groot. “It demonstrates also how important our food crops are to our nation’s health and our overall food security.”

But it is also not an indication that everything is well in the ag community, said Groot.

The values reflect gross values and do not include costs incurred by growers that include labor, field preparation, planting, irrigating, harvesting, distribution, pest management, cooling, marketing, equipment, assessments, costs or loss experienced by individual operations, and other production activities, says the report. The gross values also do not include regulatory costs for food safety implementation and compliance, air quality mandates for farm equipment, greenhouse reductions, and water quality and sustainability mandates, to name a few.

“Despite the challenges of agricultural production in California, farmers and ranchers are finding a pathway to move forward and keep producing the products that are important to our nation’s dinner tables every night,” said Groot. “Part of that is due to ag-tech and the way we are changing the way we are producing our crops. Not only producing but also harvesting.”

The theme of this year’s Crop and Livestock Report was “Smart Agriculture: Growing the Seeds of Change.” It highlights the partnerships between farmers and technology companies in Monterey County.

As artificial intelligence continues to be introduced to the world, the agriculture industry is already utilizing the new technology to tackle issues such as skilled labor shortages, environmental sustainability and worker safety, said Hidalgo in the report. AI-integrated equipment has already been developed for tasks such as input spraying, weed control, thinning, cultivating, scouting, and plant identification.

“Salinas Valley is becoming an ag-tech hub,” said Groot. “We have our innovation center here in Salinas and soon we will have Reservoir Farms out on Highway 68 (the Salinas-Monterey Highway) as a demonstration for a lot of these new technologies that are coming to help improve our agronomics,” that branch of economics dealing with the distribution, management and productivity of land

Reservoir Farms says it is the first on-farm startup incubator in California, empowering the next wave of agricultural innovators to transform how we grow, manage and sustain our food systems. Chris Valadez, president and CEO of Grower-Shipper Association of Central California, said that the agricultural resiliency in the county is because it has an amazing array of diverse crops.

“The bright story here is Monterey County’s resiliency is backed up by the fact that it has the highest value crops produced throughout the state. and throughout the nation,” he said.