Santa Barbara County’s agricultural industry remained healthy in the last year, even though it took a slight hit overall in total production.
Agriculture remained as Santa Barbara County’s top major producing industry in 2016, with an overall value of $1.4 billion dollars. But, that’s a drop of 3.7%, or $52 million dollars from 2015.
County Agricultural Commissioner Cathy Fisher says poor water quality, and labor issues impacted a number of crops.
Strawberries remain the county’s top crop, with $413 million dollars in production making up more than a third of all county agricultural production. Wine grapes are number two, with an increase of $45 million dollars since 2015. Raspberries took a big drop, going from $44 to $16 million dollars, and also getting hit hard was cut flowers, dropping from more than $100 million dollars in 2015 to about $75 million last year.
