Florida’s citrus map still reaches across 23 counties. The USDA’s latest inventory, though, counts far fewer acres in production than the state once carried—a reminder that a citrus landscape can shrink without disappearing from the map.
The retreat is not a proxy for California. The latest California acreage report puts the state’s bearing citrus base at 266,300 acres, with only a small net change over four years. The report breaks that total down by county, citrus type, variety and year planted, details that get lost when acreage is treated as one national number. California’s acreage report gives growers a more useful local reference.
Florida’s acres keep coming out of production
The decline has been steep. Heading into the 2025–26 season, Florida had 208,183 acres in use for oranges, grapefruit and specialty fruit, 24 percent fewer than a year earlier. That followed a 17 percent reduction entering the prior season; USDA figures put the loss since 2020 at 75 percent. The Florida acreage report describes an industry losing ground as production struggles and land finds other uses.
The squeeze continued in the next inventory. Florida’s 2026–27 estimate was 165,359 acres, nearly 21 percent below the year before. The newer USDA inventory figures make clear that the earlier drop was not a one-season adjustment.
When land has another job
Disease is only part of the story. In January, Florida grower Alico Inc. said it would wind down citrus operations and shift its land toward more-profitable uses. The company said it would make no further citrus operating expenditures after harvesting the 2024–25 crop. For a large landowner, the decision puts a blunt question on the table: what else can the acreage earn?
That question travels farther than Florida, but the answer does not. California growers face their own land, water and replacement decisions; Florida’s figures cannot supply a California retirement rate or predict what a particular grove is worth. The state acreage report is a better starting point for understanding how much bearing ground exists in a county and which varieties occupy it.
For California operations, the practical use of the Florida story is as a caution against reading acreage decline as a simple market signal. A shrinking footprint can reflect production trouble, a landowner’s alternative plans, or both. Those forces may lead to different decisions for a grower weighing replanting, a manager preparing a budget, or a buyer assessing a parcel.
The next useful checkpoint is the acreage data available when a California grower makes a replanting or land-purchase decision. Check the CDFA and USDA-NASS county and variety tables against the specific ground under consideration; a national headline cannot tell you whether that block still fits your operation.