In Stanislaus County’s crop ledger, pollination gets its own line: $66 million, between walnuts and melons. It is one of the stranger details in a table of the county’s biggest farm products—and a reminder that the local agricultural economy reaches beyond what leaves an orchard in a bin.
The almond entry is the large one. The 2025 agricultural report puts its value at about $1.04 billion, a 26 percent rise from $824.2 million the year before, according to the county report coverage. It was the first time since 2021 that the crop’s reported value cleared the billion-dollar mark.
Price did much of the lifting
The countywide average price moved from $1.63 to $2.40 per pound, the Modesto Bee reported. That price recovery followed a period when global oversupply had weighed on almond prices; the reported averages help explain why crop value climbed so sharply.
The county’s wider farm economy also grew: total agricultural income was up 6 percent from the prior report. Almonds stayed ahead of dairy, whose reported value was $676 million, while poultry and cattle and calves rounded out the next two places.
A county total is not an orchard budget
Gross crop value is a useful measure of what a county’s agriculture produced on paper. It is not a margin statement. County leaders cautioned that the increase in production value does not account for farmers’ rising costs, a distinction noted in the Turlock Journal’s report.
For an almond operation, the county number cannot say what a particular orchard realized after its yield, grade, contract terms and expenses were accounted for. The oddity of the ledger is that it can rank pollination beside the crops, but it cannot turn a county average into a farm-level answer.
The useful comparison is closer to home: an operation’s own marketed pounds and realized price set against its costs. That is where a stronger county market either reaches the farm or stops at the report.