Years of a growth streak, which made Kings County the No. 8-ranked agricultural economy in California, have come to a halt. New figures released by the county Tuesday show some significant ups and downs experienced by Kings County agriculture industry during the past year. Overall, the gross production values for last year ended up looking a lot like that of the previous year -- with a very slight decrease.

According to the 2008 Agricultural Crop Report, the county's gross value of products and commodities for 2008 totaled $1.760 billion. That's a 0.1 percent decrease from the 2007 figure of about $1.762 billion, the report says.

"We didn't know what to expect," said Steve Schweizer, deputy ag commissioner-sealer regarding how the prolonged drought and the economic recession might impact the gross production values.

Of seven crop categories, only two increased in value. Those were vegetable crops and field crops.

The other five dropped in value.

Fruit and nut crops showed the largest decrease in value, down $55.3 million or 17.5 percent over last year's figure. The decline was largely due to low prices for almonds, pistachios and walnuts, Schweizer said. Livestock and poultry dropped $36.3 million or 19.7 percent in value from last year's because of lowering prices and decrease in the number of cattle and calves.

Livestock and poultry products decreased $18.6 million or 2.7 percent largely because of lower milk prices. Also, seed crops and bee-hive products -- although a small part of the ag economy -- dropped by double digits.

"What really made up the difference was field crops," Schweizer said. "The price of silage -- corn silage, barley silage, wheat silage -- have really increased tremendously last year, so growers are getting some good prices for their commodities."

Also, with the drought, growers are moving more toward spring forage crops from summer crops such as cotton, which is heavily dependent on irrigation, Schweizer said.

The increase in vegetable crops was almost entirely the result of an increase in tomato production. Tomatoes alone saw an increase in value by $30.5 million from $70 million to $101 million.

Milk still remained the cream of the crop for Kings County, with the value of $670.4 million in 2008, a decrease of $21.7 million or 3.15 percent from last year's figure because of declining milk prices.

The reporter can be reached at 583-2429.

(May 13, 2009)