What are the opening hours?

Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

https://www.farmbureauvc.com/about-us/what-we-do/publications/ccfr/

Central Coast Farm & Ranch, 5156 McGrath Street, Ventura, CA (2026)

03/20/2026

Global Recognition, Local Roots
United Nations designation celebrates female roles in agriculture

By Wendy Woods

Brokaw Ranch Co. ships all kinds of avocados across the country, from a South African variety to one that looks like a dinosaur egg.
But the Santa Paula farm, which started from backyard trees grown from coffee cans, wouldn’t have had any customers without its matriarch.
Hank Brokaw cultivated avocado trees known for having healthy roots that resisted rot. He eventually ditched the coffee cans and opened a nursery. Today, it’s a family-run business with orchards that stretch across Ventura and Monterey counties.
And it all really started when Hank’s wife Ellen Brokaw took a healthy avocado tree on a little road trip. “I took my first baby daughter, put her in a basket in the car and drove around avocado farms in Ventura County and Santa Barbara just to show them the tree,” she said. “That’s how we got our first customers.”
Women play myriad and critical roles in farms and ranches around the world. They manage farms, pack fruits, run offices, and in Brokaw’s case, sell products with a baby in tow.
In May 2024, to recognize women’s increasingly vital role in agriculture, the United Nations’ General Assembly introduced and adopted a resolution to declare 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF 2026). The resolution acknowledged “the important contributions of all women working in agrifood systems…to achieving food security, improving nutrition and eradicating poverty” and “noted with concern” that women farmers still function with a gender-gap due to limited access to some resources and training. The goal of the resolution is to raise awareness of issues facing women farmers specifically and support policies that can address them.
HONORING OUR OWN FARMERS
In California, there are more than 45,000 women agricultural producers and together they steward more than 11 million acres of farmland, according to state marketing program California Grown. The number of women farmers in California increased by 13% in the last decade.
Rachael Laenen, director of farming and operations at Kimball Ranches - El Hogar, was recently named board chair of the California Avocado Commission, becoming the first chairwoman in the board’s history. She will lead a group of executives tasked to tackle a number of industry challenges, including stagnant avocado prices, rising costs and pest control.
Laenen comes from a family of avocado growers who knows a thing or two about female leadership. Her grandmother, Dorcas Thille, was the first female director of the Calavo Growers board.
“As women, we bring a different perspective, and we manage the workforce in a different way,” Laenen said. “It can also be challenging when we’re working with men who are used to being managed by men.”
Kay Wilson-Bolton remembers a time when women in agriculture were only viewed as the farmer’s wife. In the mid-1970s, Wilson-Bolton helped form the state’s first chapter of California Women for Agriculture in the Coachella Valley — originally created to advocate on behalf of busy California farmers and educate consumers — and in 1976, helped form the Ventura County chapter, which is now comprised of both growers and consumers.
“We felt more advocacy needed to be done in Sacramento,” Wilson-Bolton said. “We felt the men in Sacramento weren’t loud enough of a voice. So we educated legislators on how to vote on ag issues.”
Today there are nearly 20 chapters, including two in Santa Barbara County.
Clara Cadwell is a sixth-generation farmer at Tutti Frutti Farms, one of the first certified organic farms in Santa Barbara County. Cadwell sees a challenging future for ag, with high labor and land costs and water scarcity.
Women will continue playing a larger role tackling those challenges, she said. “Ag as a whole in the U.S. always feels like teetering on a slippery slope.”
Last year, Cadwell founded Farmette, which designs edible gardens and chicken coops in customers’ backyards. The new business comes after years working in nonprofit garden education and increasing community involvement at Tutti Frutti Farms.
“Women, we look at things a little different,” Cadwell said. “Maybe it’s not the most profitable project but it brings happiness, a sense of community and making sure people are fed good food.”
Just off of Toro Canyon Park in Santa Barbara, a group of 8-year-old girls recently celebrated a birthday among sheep, chickens and olive trees. Wanderment Farms hosts school tours and events to spread the word about organic and regenerative agriculture.
Margo Redfern, who founded the farm five years ago and serves as chief farming officer, also wants to inspire girls and show them their limitless capabilities.
“I told them that I built this fence, I grew these vegetables. Don’t let anyone tell you, ‘You can’t,’” Redfern said, adding that it can be hard for girls to see themselves in male dominated fields.
Redfern said many women farmers didn’t inherit their farm but rather started their own operations. She hopes the Year of the Woman Farmer designation will uplift small scale farming.
“I would love it if more people embraced the idea to get into small farming. A huge percentage of farms are owned by big corporations,” Redfern said. “I feel like we’re losing our options in that battle. If this could encourage other women to get into the industry, that’d be amazing.”

Wendy Woods is a veteran journalist who covered the Oxnard Plain for the Ventura County Star.

03/20/2026

Produce for the dogs
Cal Lu dog treat entrepreneurs scour farmers’ markets for “unloved” produce
By Kim Lamb Gregory /// Photos by Viktor Budnik

Pushing a stroller carrying their “mini brand ambassador,” California Lutheran University MBA graduates Rosie Baker and Princesa Martinez approached various produce stands at the Thursday Thousand Oaks Farmers’ Market.
The friends and business partners were in search of unmarketable or excess produce they can use to bake healthy dog biscuits for their startup business, UpPup.
Martinez’s infant son, Vincent, performed his brand ambassador duties well, giving a dimpled smile to each of the farmers.
“We are finding local farmers who are willing to give us the produce that normally gets thrown away, or who are willing to let us buy it from them,” said Baker, 28. “Then we’re going to a commercial kitchen where we handmake the treats. We plan to sell them at farmers’ markets or at local retailers.”
The UpPup startup is a new twist on addressing a challenge farmers have been facing for centuries: how to best use misshapen, damaged or excess produce that is edible, but not marketable.
“Farmers have long had experience with those kinds of products,” said Farm Bureau of Ventura County CEO Maureen McGuire. “There are ancient food preservation techniques created for the byproducts of the fresh market produce, with jams, jellies and apple ciders being intrinsic to the process.”
Most farmers applaud entrepreneurs like Baker and Martinez as they want to see the highest and best use of their unmarketable produce.
Farmer Vilma Gutierrez of Gutierrez Farms in San Luis Obispo regularly sees Martinez and Baker at the Thousand Oaks Farmers’ Market and is happy to donate produce.
“I would have leftovers that I would give them for their dog treats,” Gutierrez said. “Rosie gave us a couple of dog treats, and our dog Max loved them. Then she came by almost every week to pick up whatever I had. I talked to one of my neighbors and he started giving her leftover citrus and persimmons.”
Farmers at the markets generally donate leftover or imperfect produce to a food bank, or to people who come around and pick up the produce byproducts for their animals. The rest is taken home and composted.
The idea to use “unloved” produce to make dog treats came to Baker three years ago as a healthy treat for her aging dachshund, Daisy.
“I was in the process of changing Daisy’s diet to be more human grade,” Baker said. “I was giving her peas and broccoli and apples, and it changed her bloodwork. It made her much more healthy, despite her old age.”
Baker suggested turning her project into a business during a graduate class they were taking called The Business Plan when she and Martinez were pursuing their Masters of Business Administration (MBAs).
“Rosie immediately became the CEO,” said Cal Lu Adjunct Professor of Business and entrepreneur Kelly Kimball, who teaches the class. “She took it so seriously and was so passionate. She went out to all the farms and researched the mechanics of the supply chain.”
Baker (and Daisy) came to the U.S. from England in 2015 when her father’s job with Disney relocated the family to Los Angeles. Baker enrolled in Cal Lu in 2017, graduating in 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Baker now works as communications coordinator for the School of Management.
The business idea landed Baker two Dorfman Incubator Grants for $10,000 and $15,000 in 2024 and 2025 from the Steven Dorfman Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, part of the Cal Lutheran School of Management.
Martinez is just as enthusiastic about UpPup, having grown up in a multi-generational farmworking family in Oxnard.
“My grampa actually walked with Cesar Chavez,” said Martinez, 31. “My dad started onion picking and [the family] would travel up north, following the crops.”
Martinez developed the recipe for UpPup biscuits, which was a hit with UpPup’s number one taste tester, Livvy, the Martinez family dog.
Though juggling jobs and infant care, the pair have landed on the perfect paw-shaped recipe, and are now navigating the heavily-regulated pet food licensing process, with plans to launch the brand in spring, and hire Cal Lu students to help. Both feel optimistic, and happy that their product is not only healthy, but sustainable.
“At home I love to recycle. I hate throwing anything away,” Baker said. “I try to be environmentally conscious in my little corner of the world.”

03/20/2026

Farm Day Brings the Consumer to the Field

By Tami Chu

For those who have been farming for decades — or even those involved with agriculture peripherally — it is sometimes a bit of a shock to realize how little the average consumer actually knows about what happens day-to-day in the fields.
“For many, the realities of farming are largely out of sight, even though we drive past it every day,” says Caitlin Paulus Case, executive director of Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG). Since 2008, SEEAG’s mission has been to educate the community on where their food originates and how farming impacts their lives. Creating the first Ventura County Farm Day in 2013 (followed by Santa Barbara County in 2019) was a natural extension of that goal.
Mike Roberts, co-founder and COO of Farmivore Food Hub, began farming at McGrath Family Farm under the mentorship of Phil McGrath over 15 years ago. “At that time, although our area is heavily agricultural. There was really no way to access and visit the local farms,” he says.
Now offered in both Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, Farm Day is a free self-guided multi-location event that invites consumers to spend a day visiting working farms. “When community members participate in Farm Day, they get the opportunity to step into the world of local agriculture, building a deeper appreciation for the hands and the lands that feed us,” says Paulus Case, “They see firsthand the incredible amount of time, resources and skill it takes to safely grow, harvest, transport and store food so fresh produce can make it to our homes and families.”
With 20 locations participating at last count, visitors can explore the diverse agricultural spectrum of Ventura County, including SEEAG’s Farm Day Hub at Petty Ranch, Duda Farms’ Olivas Ranch, nurseries like Otto & Sons in Fillmore and Growing Works in Camarillo, Rio Regenerative Farm, a wildflower and w**d show in Santa Paula and so much more.
To learn the direct economic impact that events like Farm Day are having on the participating farms and broader community, SEEAG is partnering with the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (UC SAREP) on a research project. “The results can be used to guide decisions on future investments and partnerships and provide a more comprehensive picture of the impact of these events, both qualitative and quantitative,” says Rachael Callahan, UC SAREP’s statewide agritourism coordinator. “The economic impact study is timely, as Ventura County is in the process of developing an agritourism strategy to support agricultural viability in the county.”
While Farm Day has traditionally been held towards the end of the year, this year SEEAG has moved the date to April 11. Fifth-generation farmer Chris Sayer of Petty Ranch weighs in on the change. “This is one of the busiest times of year for local farmers,” he says. “But I’m looking forward to letting people see more of what goes into keeping Ventura one of the top crop-producing counties in the nation.”

Tami Chu, MA, MSHN, is the editor of Central Coast Farm & Ranch. She also publishes Edible Ojai & Ventura County and Edible San Fernando Valley.

03/20/2026

While Soil Health Goes National, Local Growers Dig In

By Kit Stolz

In January, at a Camarillo workshop on farming in a changing climate, UC Extension Hansen Center director Annemiek Schilder reminded the crowd that comparatively, Ventura County is the fastest warming county in the nation.
While this does not reflect temperature extremes to the levels of other parts of the country, it does represent increase risks of wildfires, water issues and longer pest seasons.
“The biggest weather problem farmers had to worry about for many years was freezes,” said Ben Faber, who has worked with Santa Barbara and Ventura County farmers as a UC Extension crop advisor since the 1980s. “Big freezes happened every twenty years or so. When they happened, it was terrible.”
About the 1990s, he said, things started to change. Hard freezes became less of a problem, but another problem showed up — heat. Now farmers are dealing with more hot days, hotter nights that don’t let plants rest, crops needing more water, stronger winds and more fire damage.
Against that backdrop, soil health has taken on new urgency. In December in Washington, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a new federal effort to boost “regenerative agriculture” nationwide, calling soil protection “critical not only for the future viability of farmland, but to the future success of American farmers.”
For many Central Coast growers and ranchers, however, the practices now being spotlighted in Washington are familiar ones. Adding organic matter, mulching, planting cover crops, improving grazing management — much of it builds on long-standing work supported by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, whose conservation programs date back to the Dust Bowl and early efforts to preserve topsoil.
To David White, soil ecologist and educator, the connection is straightforward. “Increasing soil health and sequestering carbon are two different ways of saying the same thing,” he said. Adding organic matter feeds the fungi, bacteria and invertebrates in the soil that in turn feed the plants.
In that sense, soil health is less a new initiative than a renewed focus on what keeps crops functioning under stress.
“A healthy plant is better able to resist stress,” Faber said. “The first line of defense is a healthy root system, which ensures a healthy tree that is better able to resist root rot as well as stresses such as frost, heat and wind.”
Building Organic Matter
Among the management practices supported by conservation programs are cover crops, mulching, nutrient management, soil amendments to improve organic matter, and gypsum to improve soil structure. Many growers say they were already experimenting with those tools as the climate became more unpredictable.
Alex Zadeh, who farms at AZ-Ranch in Somis and Agoura using what he calls “old-school common-sense practices,” is developing a project through the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Healthy Soils program. The reimbursement grant allows him to purchase organic compost to use for w**d suppression and then test his soil for carbon to nitrogen ratios and improved soil health.
But, he said, “a lot of the cost is still on the farmer. They pay for the compost, but I am paying for the transportation and the labor for spreading it.” For Zadeh, whose 2026 goal is to go plastic-free on his farm, the expense is part of what he was planning to do anyway. “I’m no expert,” he said, but added that farming is so much more about experimentation now that the climate is more unpredictable.
To that end, Zadeh has also found an organic paper mulch from a company in Colorado for his strawberries this year. “When I’m done with the season in two years, we’ll just pull out the irrigation lines underneath and put it all back into the soil,” he said, adding that he is working with Rodale Institute in Camarillo to study how his experiments will impact both the soil and general ecosystems on the farm.
Mike Sullivan, who manages several orchards in Ojai and Ventura County, said incentive programs can help in an increasingly inconsistent climate.
“If you have a client, they make it easier to go to the client and say, ‘Hey, there’s a program for this.’ You know you should be putting down woody mulch anyhow, for the sake of the fruit and the trees. It’s still going to cost, but the Healthy Soils program will pay about $4,000 an acre, in my experience, and that helps.”
Grazing and Fire Risk
For rancher Richard Atmore, whose R.A. Cattle Co. runs a cow-calf operation on more than 5,000 acres in the Ventura hills, state and federal conservation programs have supported fencing that allows more efficient grazing on smaller pastures.
Atmore said the programs encourage “holistic ranch management.”
“This means looking at the whole picture of the ranch, how it ties together, how to reduce invasive w**ds, and how we can use grazing for that as well,” he said. Measures to reduce tall invasive w**ds such as mustard seed and thistle help limit material that dries out in long summers and “turn into sticks that will carry fire really fast.”
He added that native grasses have improved to about 15 percent of his ranch, where statewide native grasses are down to about 2 percent.
Federal Spotlight, Familiar Work
The new Regenerative Pilot Program will route $700 million through two existing NRCS programs: the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program. According to Jordan Atmore, a soil conservation planner with the Oxnard NRCS office, that represents roughly a 25 percent increase in funding.
“It’s already kind of the same thing we’re doing, it’s just more focused on a holistic farm approach,” Atmore said. “Instead of going piece by piece, with irrigation or cover crops or mulching, now I will look at the whole farm and assess every resource concern and give grower alternatives for each of those resource concerns.”
Despite the USDA’s shift in terminology — from “climate smart” to “regenerative” — the core practices remain largely the same: building soil health, retaining topsoil and improving resilience through management decisions on the ground.
Economic Reality
Lisa Tate, who helps manage six family farms in Ventura County growing lemons, avocados and coffee, said her family used to face major freeze events every ten years or so, but they haven’t suffered a hard freeze since 2007.
During the Thomas Fire, however, Tate and her extended family farm operation lost fifty acres of avocados to what she described as “a hurricane of fire.”
“We didn’t lose any structures in that fire, but it was devastating,” Tate said. Rebuilding an avocado orchard means years without income. “So we have to rebuild our avocado business with no income. And that is no income for like, fifteen years? So how are we going to do that?”
To protect against another disaster, the family invested in two large generators capable of powering irrigation pumps — equipment that cost between $100,000 and $120,000 each, according to Tate.
As weather extremes grow more costly, investments in soil and infrastructure are increasingly tied to long-term viability. For many growers, soil health practices are part of that answer — not as a slogan, but as long-term risk management.

Kit Stolz is an award-winning journalist who has written for newspapers, magazines, literary journals and online sites. He lives in Upper Ojai and blogs at AChangeInTheWind.com.

03/20/2026

Looking ahead

by Maureen McGuire

Publications that endure do so for a reason. They become more than a collection of articles bound together each quarter.
They become a record — of seasons, of setbacks, of reinvention, of quiet persistence. Over decades, they accumulate memory. And memory, in an industry as cyclical and complex as agriculture, is no small thing.
Central Coast Farm & Ranch has served that role for our region. Through drought and flood, regulatory shifts and market volatility, generational transitions and technological change, this publication has documented the lived experience of farming and ranching on the Central Coast. It has provided space for growers, ranchers, PCAs, educators and allied professionals to speak in their own voices. It has allowed disagreement to exist without erasing shared purpose. It has insisted that agriculture’s story be told with both honesty and respect.
Continuity of that mission matters.
Today, I am pleased to introduce Tami Chu as the new editor of Central Coast Farm & Ranch.
For the past seven years, Tami has served as owner, publisher and editor of Edible Ojai & Ventura County, stewarding the publication’s 24-year commitment to highlighting the people and practices that shape our local food system. Those experiences inform her editorial approach: attentive to complexity, grounded in science and respectful of lived expertise.
Central Coast Farm & Ranch covers a broad range of issues because agriculture itself demands it. Water policy, labor dynamics, land use planning, plant breeding, wildfire recovery, market access, generational succession, regulatory compliance and community partnerships are not separate conversations. They are interconnected realities shaping the viability of our region’s farms and ranches. Our publication has never reduced those realities to simple narratives. Instead, it has sought to provide context, nuance and continuity.
As we look ahead, that commitment remains unchanged.
Tami steps into this role with a clear understanding that Central Coast Farm & Ranch is not a promotional vehicle, nor a platform for a single viewpoint. It is a forum for the industry to engage with itself — candidly, constructively, and with a shared investment in the long-term resilience of agriculture on the Central Coast.
Transitions offer an opportunity not only to reflect on where we have been, but to clarify where we are headed. With Tami’s leadership, we will continue to honor the publication’s legacy while thoughtfully expanding its reach and relevance. The goal is not reinvention for its own sake, but steady growth rooted in the values that have sustained this magazine for decades.
The seasons will continue to change. The challenges will evolve. And Central Coast Farm & Ranch will continue to document the work, the questions and the commitment that define this region’s agricultural community.

Please join me in welcoming Tami Chu as our new editor.

12/12/2025

This shepherdess makes house calls
Her prescribed grazing outfit gains traction for fire, land management
By Rob McCarthy

Cole Bush is standing in a field in Upper Ojai knee-deep in prickly w**ds and plants that need to go.
The soft ground is slippery and uneven, making this w**d-abatement job ideal for Bush and her workers.
Bush is the owner-operator of Shepherdess Land & Livestock. Standing nearby are her 200 sheep and goats. Their job is to reduce the volume of invasive plants and w**ds so the native grasses, plants and flowers can thrive. Her “crew” also reduces the fire danger by removing tall growth that accelerates fires.
There is plenty for them to snack on here in Ojai’s Happy Valley, and they only need one day to flatten a one-acre section before handlers move the portable electric fence that keeps the herd from wandering off. The animals are always hungry and grazing keeps their bellies full and Bush’s operating expenses down.
“I don’t feed them. They’re always munching on forage,” she said.
This shepherding style is called prescribed grazing. It’s gotten a boost from Sacramento lawmakers, becoming visible in communities around the county. Herds of sheep and goats are regulars on an empty lot in Camarillo next to the airport and by the former La Reina school campus in Thousand Oaks.
Modern shepherds increasingly are raising animals for this type of work rather than for meat. Prescribed grazing is attracting a generation of young people looking for more than a paycheck. Shepherding is a good fit for the 4-H’ers with experience raising animals and for someone like Bush who grew up in suburban Southern California.
“There’s room for more shepherds doing this work, so part of my job is to give them that opportunity, she said.
Bush trained in animal husbandry and vegetation management, which includes identifying non-native plant species and consulting on land issues with property owners and public agencies with large tracts to manage. Her herd size fluctuates from 300 to 1,000 animals, depending on the time of year.
Shepherds for hire
Dylan Boeken is a first-generation shepherd in the Ojai Valley who’s taken a more traditional approach. While he does graze his animals for a daily rate to a few local landowners, he raises goat and sheep for slaughter. He butchers and sells the meat to specialty grocers and restaurants, he said.
He is a shepherd-for-hire, too, working part-time for the Shepherdess Land & Livestock during the busy spring and summer months.
Bush was drawn to what’s known as “pastoralism” 15 years ago, she said, because of its role in protecting environments, sequestering carbon and enhancing biodiversity. For the last five years she’s run her own outfit with three regular employees and some part-timers.
Shepherds charge $750 to $1,200 per day to rent their flocks. Starting a business with 200 animals costs upwards of $250,000, they estimate, including equipment such as electric fencing, trailers, trucks and water pumps.
Besides transporting animals, much of the shepherd’s work involves setting up the fencing and positioning solar panels and batteries to keep animals from escaping or predators from knocking over the protective barrier.
“It’s incredibly high risk. We’re bringing livestock into non-traditional places,” Bush said.
Guard dogs stay with the herd day and night. Barking alerts a shepherd to trouble with the animals. John Fraher, one of the regulars on Bush’s crew and another first-generation animal caretaker, says he’s developed a “shepherd’s sense” when a fence needs checking or the water trough’s run dry.
The non-traditional career appeals to those who love to care for animals and are willing to stay in a camper with the herd day and night for as long as necessary, Bush said.
California last year added prescribed grazing to the state statute that governs rangeland management. Lawmakers showed support for the practice by making state funding available to eligible landowners and local government to hire shepherds like Bush.
She often spends her days now away from the herd and in the company of people interested in hearing about modern-day shepherding. Last month, the shepherdess took a state senator on a tour to see grazing animals at work.
“This is not a typical ag job,” she said. “The way to retention is to create a job that folks enjoy and will want to stay in, recognizing that this is the first step to a career or entrepreneurship for many.”

Rob McCarthy is a veteran journalist who delights in covering agriculture. He lives in Oxnard.

12/12/2025

Limoneira rejoins Sunkist
By Dawn Megli

Limoneira and Sunkist are getting the band back together in 2026.
Limoneira Company will rejoin Sunkist Growers, Inc. this fall, paving the way for the Los Angeles County citrus marketing cooperative to handle sales and marketing for Limoneira growers.
The move is expected to restore profitability, improving Limoneira’s bottom line by $5 million through cost savings, streamlined operations and enhanced supply chain efficiency. It will also give Sunkist an expanded portfolio of growers following the departure of one of its biggest suppliers. When Limoneira reenters the Sunkist fold, it will be one of the cooperative’s largest lemon growers and an exclusive Sunkist private licensed packer.
Limoneira CEO Harold Edwards said the partnership will allow Limoneira’s suppliers to tap into the fast-growing demand for lemons in the quick-serve restaurant market where lemonade has a better profit margin than a chicken sandwich. And because Limoneira doesn’t sell any round citrus, the ability to market their lemons alongside a full suite of Sunkist citrus will allow Limoneira to take advantage of Sunkist’s contracted pricing and one-stop-shopping with retailers across the country.
“Being tied to those customers is a godsend for us,” Edwards said. “It’s really a strategic opportunity for us.”
This partnership represents a reunion following a 15-year hiatus. Limoneira was one of the original founders of Sunkist in 1893, but it left the Los Angeles County-based cooperative in 2010 to focus on developing a supply chain stretching the Americas. That approach boosted its year-round supply from one million to over 5 million cartons a year. It also focused on providing packing and marketing services to its grower partners.
But a lemon glut, coupled with plummeting demand during the pandemic, delivered a one-two punch to the industry, as 70% of all lemons are consumed in restaurants and bars, Edwards said. So three years ago, Limoneira began to look for a pivot.
In addition to rejoining Sunkist, Limoneira began to prioritize supply chains over farmland, divesting acreage in Tulare County and converting 1,000 acres of lemons in Ventura County to avocados.
The timing was mutually beneficial. Limoneira’s return will make up for the supply lost when one of Sunkist’s largest local suppliers left for the Wonderful Company in early 2025. Sunkist CEO Jim Phillips said partnering with Limoneira will help bring Ventura County growers to a sustainable position in an oversupplied market.
“It’s just really nice for us to see a founding member come back into the family,” Phillips said. “This is a great opportunity for both of us.”
Limoneira turns to real estate
Limoneira remains an independent business entity, getting smaller and more focused when it comes to citrus, Edwards said, while diversifying to real estate with developments in Ventura County. The company’s residential development in Santa Paula, Harvest at Limoneira, has over 2,000 housing units. The company is currently working on entitlements for a new residential development in Ventura, Limco Del Mar.
Limoneira’s sales and marketing personnel were offered jobs with Sunkist beginning November 1. Sunkist represents up to 60% of the market for lemons that are produced and sold locally, Edwards said.
The Sunkist partnership is just one move Limoneira has made to adapt to the changing business climate, one in which they haven’t made money as a lemon grower for the past five years.
“It was the perfect move for us at this time,” Edwards said. “Because our historical roots go 133 years back to the formation of Sunkist, it’s really been more like a homecoming for us.”

Dawn Megli, a Camarillo-based freelancer, has written for the Ventura County Star and the Thousand Oaks Acorn.

Central Coast Farm & Ranch

03/20/2026

03/20/2026

03/20/2026

03/20/2026

03/20/2026

12/12/2025

12/12/2025

Address

Opening Hours

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm