California's 600,000 acres of wine grapes produced 4.2 million tons in 2017, an average yield of 7.2 tons an acre. Most California wine grapes are red varieties: 2.2 million tons or 52 percent were red compared with 1.8 million tons or 48 percent that were white varieties. Napa or District 4 crushed 142,000 tons of grapes or 3.4 percent of the total, while Fresno (District 13) crushed 1.3 million tons or 31 percent of the total.
California has led the nation in farm sales since 1948, when Los Angeles County had more farm sales than any other U.S. county. The major reason that California's farm sales of $46 billion in 2016 were almost $20 billion higher than Number 2 Iowa at $27 billion is the dominance of high-value fruit, nut, and vegetable crops. Three-fourths of California's farm sales are fruits and nuts, vegetables and melons, and horticultural specialties such as floriculture, nurseries, and mushrooms, so-called FVH crops.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistic's Consumer Expenditure Survey (www.bls.gov/cex) reported 129.5 million US "consumer units" or households in 2016 with an average of 2.5 persons, 1.3 earners, and 1.9 motor vehicles. Some 62 percent were homeowners, and the average age of the reference person in the household was 51.
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Circular or temporary foreign worker programs (TFWPs), sometimes known as guest worker programs, aim to add workers temporarily to the labor force without adding settlers to the population. The terminology, temporary foreign worker or guest worker, emphasizes the rotation principle at the heart of TFWPs: migrants are expected to work in another country from several months to several years before returning to their countries of origin. If employer demand for migrants persists, there may be replacement migrants, but the ratio of employed to total migrants should be near 100 percent.
Americans are consuming more fruit and vegetables imported from abroad. About half of US fresh fruit (53 percent in 2017) and almost a third of US fresh vegetables (31 percent in 2017) are imported.
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