This US State Produces The Most Fresh Produce

If you're buying or eating American-grown fresh produce, there's a pretty good chance it came from one place: California. That's no surprise since the Golden State has the largest economy in America and the fourth-largest in the entire world. As the saying goes, "California feeds the nation." That's certainly true when it comes to growing fruits and vegetables — by a long shot. More than one-third of the vegetables grown in America come from this agricultural powerhouse, as well as at least three-fourths of all fruits and nuts.

With volume like that, it's hard to imagine the food-supply disruption if California farmers weren't delivering on their longstanding commitment to farming and agriculture. Several well-loved fresh veggies and fruits have even higher outputs than the overall produce percentages. Statistics show California growing 90% to 100% of things like broccoli, lettuce, avocados, grapes, strawberries, lemons, cauliflower, plums, and many, many more.

For example, grapes are one of the most popular fruits hailing from California, especially if you count the 500 million gallons of wine coming from those grapes in 2023 alone. That's about 80% of all wine production in America, with  Washington coming up no. 2, another West Coast farming giant. And California's grapes don't just go into boozy bottles; they also grace countless kitchens, picnics, and lunchboxes in the form of everyday table grapes, including Thomcord grapes and the beloved and unique flame seedless grapes born and bred in Fresno.

Another highly prized California-grown crop is its many varieties of avocados. In the American psyche, these green beauties are often tied to Mexican food — and a whole lot of Mexican-grown avocados do make their way across the border and into our homes. But for ones grown on American farms, that soil is almost exclusively in California (around 90 percent). Growers are predicting an avocado harvest of 375 million pounds in 2025, and about 10 percent of those will be certified organic. However, production costs for avocados are reportedly very high, meaning that Mexico will likely continue filling our guacamole bowls and topping our toast for the foreseeable future.

Lemons are a vital crop as well, impacting many facets of food and drink consumption in America and beyond. It's easy to imagine endless rows of colorful lemon groves in Florida, but it's actually California that gives us the most pucker-perfect ingredient for our lemonades, pies, sauces, and lemon drop cocktails. The same goes for strawberries, though volumes ebb and flow with new varieties or contributing factors such as weather or worker shortages.

Another intriguing development in the produce equation is the emergence of organic crops. Organic acreage for California strawberries tripled between 2008 and 2019, comprising as much as 75 percent of that fruit's organic market. Again, Mexico sends millions of pounds of strawberries across the Mexican-U.S. border, but roughly 85% of that historically enters American markets outside of California's peak strawberry season.