Reviewed September 2026 against USDA NASS and CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) data.

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California Agriculture: Where Almonds & Top Crops Grow

California’s farms produced $61.2 billion in agricultural value in 2024, up 3.6% from 2023, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). Almonds are grown almost entirely in the Central Valley, with roughly 80% of bearing acreage concentrated in the San Joaquin Valley counties running from San Joaquin south to Kern, per an Integrated Pest Management crop profile compiled from USDA and NASS data. If you searched for where in California almonds are grown, or what the state actually produces and how much it is worth, the numbers below answer both — with the USDA and CDFA sources behind each figure so you can verify or refresh them yourself.

This article covers three things directly: the geography of California’s biggest crops (especially almonds, since that is the specific question most visitors bring), the current acreage, yield, and dollar value for the state’s top commodities, and the technology — irrigation, soil, satellite monitoring — that determines how those numbers move year to year.

California’s Agricultural Landscape by the Numbers

California’s $61.2 billion in 2024 agricultural production value (CDFA, September 2025) makes it the top-value farm state in the U.S. by a wide margin. The state’s climate zones — the Central Valley, the Salinas Valley, and the Imperial and Coachella valleys in the south — each specialize by crop rather than compete for the same ones. The Central Valley carries almonds, grapes, pistachios, and tomatoes. The Salinas Valley carries lettuce and other leafy greens. The Imperial and Coachella valleys extend the growing season into winter for vegetables that can’t be field-grown elsewhere in the country during those months.

The reliable way to track how this shifts year over year is USDA NASS’s State Agriculture Overview for California, which carries current acreage, yield, production, and value data across every major crop and is the source for most of the figures in this article. CDFA’s statistics are compiled separately and released as an annual crop report each September; the 2024 figures cited throughout this piece were published in September 2025, so the 2025 edition should land around September 2026 at CDFA’s Statistics portal.

Key Figures for California Agriculture Production

• $61.2 billion total value of agricultural production, 2024 (CDFA, published September 2025).
• 3.6% year-over-year growth in production value, 2023 to 2024 (CDFA).
• 1,390,000 acres of bearing almond acreage statewide, 2025 (USDA NASS).
• 751,000 acres of harvested grape acreage, 2025 (USDA NASS).
• 521,000 acres of harvested pistachio acreage, 2025 (USDA NASS).

Where Almonds Are Grown in California

California almonds are grown almost exclusively in the Central Valley, running from San Joaquin County in the north down through Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings, Tulare, and Kern counties in the south. Roughly 80% of the state’s bearing almond acreage sits within the San Joaquin Valley portion of that stretch, according to a crop profile drawing on USDA and NASS data hosted by the IPM Centers. The remaining acreage sits further north in the Sacramento Valley, where cooler winters and different soil types support a smaller but established almond industry, mainly in Glenn, Colusa, Butte, and Yolo counties.

Almonds need a Mediterranean climate with wet winters and dry summers, well-drained soil, and reliable irrigation — conditions the Central Valley provides better than almost anywhere else on the planet. That is why California, and specifically this one valley system, supplies roughly 80% of the world’s almond supply from a geographic footprint smaller than many single Midwest counties.

California Almond Acreage, Yield, and Value

To track how this changes: USDA NASS publishes an Almond Forecast in May each year with a preliminary yield estimate, then a July Objective Measurement report that refines it using actual orchard sampling. Comparing the May and July releases at USDA NASS’s California Almond publications page is the fastest way to see whether the current season is tracking above or below the prior one before the final numbers are certified.

California’s Other Major Crops: Grapes, Strawberries, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Pistachios

Almonds are the largest single crop by value, but California’s $61.2 billion agricultural sector rests on several other commodities that each carry billion-dollar production values and distinct growing regions.

Grapes

California harvested 751,000 acres of grapes in 2025, producing 4,670,000 tons, with a 2024 value of production of $5.6 billion — nearly matching almonds (USDA NASS; CDFA). Wine grapes concentrate in Napa, Sonoma, and the Central Valley; table grapes are grown mainly in the southern San Joaquin Valley around Kern and Tulare counties. NASS’s state overview reports total tonnage but does not break out wine, table, and raisin varieties separately — for that split, USDA’s Quick Stats database at quickstats.nass.usda.gov allows a more granular county- and variety-level query.

Strawberries

Strawberries covered 45,000 acres of harvested land in 2025 (USDA NASS), concentrated along the Central Coast around Watsonville, Salinas, and Santa Maria, plus a southern district around Oxnard and Santa Maria that extends the harvest season into winter months. NASS’s state overview does not publish a separate strawberry value-of-production figure in the brief compiled for this article; for county-level tonnage, that detail sits with individual County Agricultural Commissioners’ annual crop reports rather than the state NASS summary.

Lettuce and Leafy Greens

Lettuce and leafy greens carried a 2024 value of production of $3.67 billion (CDFA), grown predominantly in the Salinas Valley — often called “America’s Salad Bowl” — where cool coastal fog and consistent temperatures support near-year-round harvests.

Tomatoes

California harvested 216,900 acres of tomatoes in 2025 (USDA NASS), split between processing tomatoes destined for canning and paste, and fresh-market tomatoes. The Central Valley, particularly Fresno, Yolo, and San Joaquin counties, accounts for the bulk of processing tomato acreage.

Pistachios

Pistachio harvested acreage reached 521,000 acres in 2025 (USDA NASS) — a crop that has expanded steadily in the southern San Joaquin Valley as growers diversify tree-nut portfolios alongside almonds.

Where the brief behind this article does not carry a specific figure — such as itemized value of production for tomatoes, strawberries, or pistachios, or variety-level grape breakdowns — the honest answer is that it is not published in the state-overview summary. The fix is USDA’s Quick Stats tool, which lets you filter by commodity, county, and year directly rather than waiting for a state-level aggregate.

Calculator: Estimate a California Crop’s Farm-Gate Value

Use your own acreage and expected yield alongside the current per-unit price to estimate a crop’s farm-gate value — the same arithmetic behind the acreage and value figures cited above.

Assumptions: this is a simple acreage × yield × price estimate and excludes input costs, water costs, labor, insurance, and marketing order deductions — it approximates gross farm-gate revenue, not net profit. Default values reflect the 2024 California almond yield and an illustrative price; replace them with your own crop's current NASS yield and market price.

How Technology Is Changing California Crop Production

Water constraints and labor costs are the two forces reshaping how California's crops get grown, regardless of which commodity is involved. The response has concentrated on three fronts: precision irrigation, soil-health practices that reduce input dependency, and satellite or sensor-based monitoring that lets growers act on field-level data instead of averages.

• Precision agriculture: satellite imaging, soil sensors, and field-level data analytics that target irrigation, pest control, and fertilizer application rather than applying them uniformly across a block.
• Traceability and transparency systems: supply-chain tools that document where produce originated and how it was handled, which matters for both food-safety compliance and export markets that require documented sourcing.
• Water-focused resource management: drip and subsurface irrigation, groundwater recharge, and recycled water use, discussed in detail below.
• Soil-health practices: cover cropping, reduced tillage, and organic amendments that reduce erosion and synthetic fertilizer dependency.

Precision Irrigation and Water Management

Water availability is the binding constraint on how much of California's farmland can be planted to high-value permanent crops like almonds and grapes in a given year. Satellite-based indices such as the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) let growers see which specific field sections are under water stress before visible symptoms appear, informing where to route limited irrigation capacity. Farmonaut's carbon and water monitoring platform applies this kind of index at the field level.

Two structural shifts matter here beyond satellite monitoring itself: the expansion of drip and subsurface micro-irrigation across permanent-crop acreage (almonds and grapes are both well suited to drip systems because they are planted in fixed rows), and the growth of groundwater recharge programs that use wet-season surface water surplus to replenish aquifers ahead of dry years — a response partly driven by California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act reporting requirements for high- and medium-priority groundwater basins.

Regenerative Agriculture and Soil Health

Cover cropping, reduced tillage, and organic soil amendments are the three practices most commonly associated with regenerative approaches in California's row-crop and orchard systems. Cover crops planted between almond or vineyard rows during the dormant season reduce erosion on sloped ground and add organic matter without competing with the primary crop for water during the growing season. Reduced tillage preserves soil structure and the microbial populations that support nutrient cycling, and it lowers fuel and labor costs per pass. Compost and manure amendments reduce dependence on synthetic nitrogen, which matters both for cost — synthetic fertilizer prices are volatile — and for compliance with regional water-quality regulations that limit nitrate runoff into groundwater basins.

None of these practices show up as a line item in NASS's acreage or value tables, so there is no statewide adoption percentage in the research brief behind this article that would be honest to cite. What is measurable and available is acreage under specific state cost-share programs, tracked through CDFA's Healthy Soils Program reporting — a more reliable adoption signal than a modeled estimate.

Labor, Mechanization, and Supply Chain Resilience

California's labor-intensive crops — strawberries, lettuce, and tomatoes among them — face persistent seasonal labor availability pressure, which has pushed investment toward mechanical harvesting and automated sorting and packing lines. Almonds and pistachios, by contrast, are already mechanically shaken and harvested at scale, which is part of why tree-nut acreage has expanded even as labor costs elsewhere in the state's crop mix have risen.

• Cold chain logistics: maintaining continuous refrigeration from field to distribution center is critical for strawberries and leafy greens specifically, since both have short shelf lives and travel long distances to reach East Coast and export markets.
• Traceability systems: tools like Farmonaut's traceability platform let growers document chain-of-custody data that retailers and export buyers increasingly require as a condition of purchase.
• Farm management platforms: systems such as Farmonaut's large-scale farm management tools centralize crop-health monitoring, labor scheduling, and resource allocation across multiple fields or ranches.
• Fleet coordination: Farmonaut Fleet Management tracks equipment and transport vehicles across harvest windows, which matters most for perishable crops with narrow harvest timing like strawberries and processing tomatoes.

California Agriculture: Practice Comparison Table

Satellite Tools for Monitoring California Farmland

Farmonaut provides several tools relevant to growers tracking the crops and acreage discussed above:

• Satellite-based monitoring: multispectral imaging combined with analytics for vegetation health via NDVI/NDWI tracking, flagging crop stress and irrigation needs at the field level.
• JEEVN AI advisory: real-time AI-driven weather forecasts and management guidance for growers and agribusinesses.
• Blockchain-based traceability: supply-chain transparency tools at Farmonaut Traceability, relevant to any grower supplying retailers or export markets that require documented sourcing.
• Fleet and resource management: Farmonaut Fleet Management for coordinating field equipment and transport during narrow harvest windows.
• Carbon footprint tracking: tools at Farmonaut Carbon Footprinting for growers documenting emissions for regulatory or buyer-driven sustainability requirements.
• APIs for integration: the Farmonaut API and its developer documentation let larger operations pull satellite and weather data directly into existing farm-management systems.

Economic and Environmental Impact

California's $61.2 billion in 2024 agricultural production value (CDFA) supports employment across field labor, processing, logistics, and agronomy roles statewide, and the sector's output feeds both domestic distribution and export channels — almonds in particular are a major U.S. agricultural export line, given that California accounts for a large majority of global almond supply from its 1,390,000 bearing acres.

On the environmental side, the practices already discussed — cover cropping, reduced tillage, drip irrigation, groundwater recharge — are the sector's primary tools for managing its resource footprint. Carbon footprint monitoring platforms, including Farmonaut's Carbon Footprinting Platform, give growers a way to document emissions trends over time for both regulatory reporting and buyer-side sustainability requirements, which are becoming more common conditions of supply contracts with larger retailers and export partners.

What Happens Next in California Agriculture

The two variables that will move next year's numbers most are water allocation and commodity prices for almonds and grapes specifically, since those two crops alone accounted for $11.3 billion of the state's $61.2 billion in 2024 production value. Watch three release points to stay current: CDFA's annual crop report each September at its Statistics portal for the statewide total and top-commodity rankings; USDA NASS's Almond Forecast in May and Objective Measurement report in July for the season's tree-nut trajectory; and USDA's Quick Stats database for any county- or crop-level detail not carried in the state summary, including the grape variety splits, strawberry and tomato value figures, and organic-versus-conventional acreage that are not itemized in the state overview.

That three-source method — CDFA for the state total, NASS's forecast cycle for the almond-specific numbers, and Quick Stats for anything more granular — stays valid regardless of which direction the next report moves, which is the more durable takeaway than any single year's figure.

FAQ: California Grown Produce

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Summary: California Grown Produce, Backed by the Numbers

California's $61.2 billion agricultural sector (CDFA, 2024) is concentrated geographically: almonds in the Central Valley's San Joaquin stretch, grapes split between Napa/Sonoma and the southern San Joaquin, lettuce in the Salinas Valley, and winter vegetables in the Imperial and Coachella valleys. The figures cited throughout — 1,390,000 acres of almonds, 751,000 acres of grapes, 521,000 acres of pistachios, and the $5.7 billion and $5.6 billion values behind the state's two largest crops — come directly from USDA NASS and CDFA and are refreshed on a predictable annual and monthly cycle at the sources linked above. Farmonaut does not grow, sell, or regulate any of these crops; the satellite monitoring, traceability, and advisory tools described here are built to help growers act on exactly this kind of field-level data as conditions change season to season.