This story is part of our September 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.




A great paradox lies at the heart of California’s
nation-leading, $60-billion-a-year agricultural industry: In a
state known for its huge farming economy, small farms earn just a
sliver of the revenue, and many struggle to stay in business.

The lore of the small family farm runs deep in American culture,
with Thomas Jefferson making it an organizing principle for the
then-young country. But the reality has long been that
large-scale agribusinesses dominate the industry, including in
California.

Small farms — those with annual gross income under $350,000 —
accounted for 74 percent of farms in California in 2022, the last
year data are available, according to the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. The state lost almost 9,000 small farms between 2017
and 2022, going from 55,605 to 46,804, a 16 percent drop in just
five years. While small farm statistics are not available at the
county level, similar statistics show the same trends in the
Sacramento Valley, and experts say the dynamics causing the
decline are happening across the state.

Industry leaders and experts point to a variety of reasons for
the decline of small farms in California, including water
shortages, labor challenges and real estate costs. Small farms
often don’t have the capital needed to handle the ups and downs
inherent in agriculture, especially in California, with its
unreliable rainfall and shifting regulations. Small farms are
also less likely to grow high-value crops like nuts and citrus,
which are a big reason for the state’s farming success. Small
farms can’t afford the high investment cost and risk associated
with them.

“There is no single reason farms are disappearing in California,
but the trend is undeniable. It continues to be very tough to
farm in California,” says Steven Fenaroli, a spokesman for the
California Farm Bureau, in a written statement. “For many family
operations, these pressures have proved to be unsustainable. Some
are forced to sell. Others have consolidated with larger
operations, and too many have left agriculture altogether.

“These businesses,” he added, “are the foundation of our rural
communities, our food security, and the state’s agricultural
leadership. Ensuring they can survive and thrive is essential to
California’s future.”

Daniel A. Sumner, a professor of agricultural economics at UC
Davis and a former agricultural economist at USDA, says farming
has become more complicated, and the rewards have not grown, at
least for the small farm operator.

“It takes more resources to make a living. For a long time,
farmers were poor people and doing all the work themselves,”
Sumner says. “These days you are a smart, hardworking person and
those people can do something else. Could be a banker or trust
fund manager.

“It’s a tough business. It’s risky. It goes up and down. Prices
go up and down. Water availability goes up and down.”

— Daniel A. Sumner, professor of agricultural economics
at UC Davis and a former agricultural economist
at USDA

“It’s a tough business. It’s risky. It goes up and down. Prices
go up and down. Water availability goes up and down,” says
Sumner, who grew up on a family farm. “You have to be smart and
have a cast-iron stomach. It sorts (selects) for people who can
tolerate long hours, hard work and no vacation.”

Eric and Andrew Walker, 29-year-old identical twin brothers,
didn’t initially plan to become farmers, even though they grew up
on a small farm run by their parents. Andrew studied sports
management, and Eric pursued journalism when they were in
college. Yet, when the opportunity came to farm a 5-acre tract in
Winters because another farmer was retiring, they jumped at it.

The Walkers say the property is well suited to their business
because it is small with a barn, greenhouse and tractor, which
made the property ready for them to farm. Their parents farmed
the same property before the twins were born. Since starting
Farmboy Organics in 2022, Eric and Andrew have leased three
additional small properties and hired two part-time employees.

The work is hard: six days a week, 10 hours a day, year-round.
They wear three layers of clothes, even in triple-digit heat, to
avoid getting stabbed by plants. But they enjoy the work,
particularly going to markets in Davis and Marin County three
days a week, where they can see how customers appreciate the food
they grow — 20 varieties of tomatoes and other fruits, vegetables
and herbs.

The seed for such interest was laid when they were children,
helping their parents on weekends at the Ferry Plaza Farmers
Market in San Francisco. “It’s awesome when people tell us our
tomatoes taste great,” Eric says, noting that customers are used
to bland-tasting tomatoes from grocery stores.

The Walkers say they’ve been successful so far. The business has
grown, and they have never had to take out a loan to cover
operating expenses, a common industry practice. Yet uncertainty
looms over the business. Because the Walkers lease the land, they
can’t be certain the owners won’t sell it for housing or some
other development. If the property went up for sale, they
couldn’t afford to buy it.

Eric Walker shows produce grown on his farm in Winters. (Photo by
Brad Branan)

“It’s pretty hard to own land. It’s hard to convince banks to
give you a loan,” Andrew says, adding that a bank employee
actually came out to the farm to ask questions before approving a
$20,000 loan for a used van. The uncertainty of farming can make
it difficult to provide banks with the information needed to
evaluate credit risk. “I don’t know how much I’m going to make
each year,” Andrew says.

Brian Park, 44, runs Park Farming Organics in Sutter County. He
credits his bank with saving his farm from the vicissitudes of
the market.  He says he has had to take out operating loans
more than once. Park grows similar crops to the Walkers’, a wide
variety of fruits and vegetables, among other things, with a
heavy emphasis on keeping the soil healthy. Along with his bank,
Park credits soil conservation and constant innovation with
making his farm a success. Park took over the business in 2021,
buying the farm from his parents.

Park is fortunate in that he has excellent water rights located a
short distance from the Sacramento River. The flipside is that
his farm is in a floodplain, and a big winter storm could spell
disaster. Such is the topsy-turvy world of California farming,
particularly when it comes to water.

The Sacramento Valley — which runs north from Sacramento County
to Tehama County — gets more rain than the San Joaquin Valley.
The two valleys make up the Central Valley and the heart of
California farm country. But because most of the rain falls in
the winter, Sacramento Valley farms are still heavily dependent
on water deliveries and irrigation in summer months. To keep the
state’s farming industry strong, the state and federal government
built an elaborate system of dams, reservoirs and canals.

Brian Park has made tomatoes the centerpiece of his farm in
Sutter County near the Sutter Buttes.

From 2002 to 2022, when small farms experienced great stress, the
Sacramento Valley was subject to severe drought for more than
half the years, and water deliveries were reduced significantly.
Since 2022, rainfall across the Sacramento Valley has increased
considerably, and allocations have returned to normal for most of
the delivery system. However, the recent dry winter has raised
concerns, and another water problem looms on the horizon.

The future concern for farmers is groundwater management
regulations. Historically, farmers have turned to groundwater
during droughts. The state largely ignored the practice and
allowed for critical overdrafts of the aquifer, causing parts of
the state to sink, a process called subsidence. The state began
to rein in the practice of overdraft with the passage of the
Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014, which required
new local agencies to develop groundwater management plans. The
agencies can restrict pumping, impose fees and require meters.

Small farms have fewer resources to meet the new demands than
corporate farms. The law’s demands are expected to be greater in
the San Joaquin Valley than in the Sacramento Valley, where
access to surface water and irrigation is greater.

The Yolo Subbasin Groundwater Agency is responsible for the well
water heavily relied upon by the Walkers at their farm in
Winters. The agency’s plan says the area’s groundwater use has
been historically sustainable, but future use will be monitored
to prevent chronic draining.

Another pressure on small farms is wage laws. Even small farms
typically have seasonal workers to handle harvests and other
work, says Sumner of UC Davis. In 2016, the state passed a law
that eventually required farmers to pay workers overtime — one
and a half times the normal wage — after eight hours of work in a
day or 40 hours in a week. For small farms, with 25 or fewer
employees, the law kicked in last year, with less stringent
overtime requirements for the three previous years.

Park says the law creates a disincentive for farm managers to
provide as much work as they can. Employees, who often want to
work as many hours as possible, also lose, Park says. “They
should leave it up to the employee to decide how many hours they
want to work” at a standard wage, he says.

Higher wages are a major reason why farming in California costs
one-third more than in other states, Park says. Some studies have
put agricultural costs in California even higher relative to
other states. While neither Park nor the Walkers report any
problems keeping their farms staffed, U.S. Immigration and
Customs Service raids on farms in Southern California this year
have created widespread concern among undocumented farmworkers.
Some workers are not showing up for work due to fear of arrest,
according to news reports.

Park says he has worked hard to establish a strong relationship
with his employees, recognizing the importance of their work on
his farm. For instance, he took an immersion learning class in
Spanish in Monterey so he could talk to them in their native
language.

“They are a super, super important and critical part of our
operation. We try to treat them and take care of them as best as
we possibly can,” Park says. “And there’s a selfish reason for
that — I don’t want to have to retrain workers when they leave.”
He says most of his workers have been there for over two decades,
working for his parents before he took over.

Asked why he continues farming despite the high costs and other
demands of the industry, Park says he loves working outside,
being his own boss and producing high-quality food. Most of his
income comes from selling to major manufacturers like Pacific
Foods and Morning Star. Unlike the Walkers, he doesn’t sell
directly at markets.

Park hopes one day his children, ages 10 and 13, might be able to
take over the farm, although they have expressed no interest yet,
and he isn’t sure it will be an option when they’re old enough.

“Will we be able to farm in California then?” he asks. “I
honestly don’t know.”

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