Report shows more than $100 million rise in Santa Cruz County crop values

Santa Cruz County Agricultural Commissioner Juan Hidalgo released the 2018 Santa Cruz County Crop Report on Thursday, and it shows a more than $100 million rise in crop values and a 17% increase in crop production values over the year before.

The report said that strawberries are still the top crop in acres in terms of production, yield and value overall, but raspberries saw a 52% increase in value over the year before. Raspberries had a total value of about $168.5 million, which is the highest figure recorded in Santa Cruz County. Strawberries were valued at about $220.7 million.

“Weather, low prices and oversupply impacted our local growers in 2017, making for a challenging year,” Hidalgo said. “We’re happy to see significant rebound in 2018 to put us back in line with historic growth in crop values. It demonstrates how resilient our local industry is.”

Nursery stock, which includes landscape and indoor plants, rose 85% over the year before to about $83.2 million. The report also found that the value of apple stocks was about $23.7 million, a 75% increase. The report said that could be due to favorable weather patterns.

The report also found that organic farming plays a significant role in overall crop production. There were 140 registered organic growers in the county, and the total value of organic crops was about $126.4 million, a 16% increase over the previous year.

The county said its overall 2018 crop value of about $683 million is a $101.8 million increase over 2017.

The full crop report is available at www.agdept.com.