From Mesa to Scottsdale to Surprise, orange groves used to cover much of Maricopa County, making citrus one of the industries that defined Arizona’s economy.
But with nearly all of those oranges replaced by housing, malls and other developments, is citrus still one of the state’s five C’s?
Arizona’s citrus industry was valued at over $100 million annually in the early 1990s before home building and development displaced most of the large scale orchards in Maricopa County, according to USDA’s annual citrus reports.
Last year, the state’s crop was valued at $24 million, with all of that attributed to lemon production that is largely relegated to Yuma County.
These days, residents can still pick oranges and buy trees at a few different operations scattered throughout Maricopa County, but gone are the days when a local growing operation could sell their fruit to the nearby Sunkist packing plant in Mesa, to be sold at grocery stores and markets. The plant’s operations peaked in 1995, with over 1 million cartons of citrus packed, but closed less than two decades later as it became harder and harder to turn a profit selling citrus here.
From orchards to backyards
In many ways, John Babiarz’s Greenfield Nursery in Mesa exemplifies the changes Arizona’s citrus industry has experienced over the past four decades — as housing has displaced what was once a thriving industry.
Babiarz and his wife have been in the business since the 1970s, and their nursery is named for the Mesa road where they first opened the nursery. These days, it's located near McDowell Road and the Loop 202, with development encroaching on all sides.
“We grow about 67 varieties of citrus trees, and a lot of the oddball stuff you can't find anywhere else,” he said. “And we have large trees, you know, that are 25-, 30-year-old trees down to the small stuff that you could probably find at Home Depot.”
But, unlike Home Depot, his plants are grown right here in Maricopa County.
“They're budded onto a sour orange rootstock, which is great for Salt River Valley. And a lot of the stuff that you buy at the big box stores comes out of Yuma,” he said. “And I always tell people it's good if you pack it up and move to Yuma with it.”
Babiarz points out plots of land on all sides of his nursery that have been sold off for development.
He’s currently rankled by a two-story home that just went up at a new development next door, aptly named The Grove. The rest of the homes along his property line are single story, and the unexpected larger house looks right over the property line and onto his house.
He’s not happy about the intrusion — but Babiarz found an apt solution. He planted an array of trees along the property line to return a sense of privacy.
“So, you know, what are you gonna do? Development. You know, sooner or later, they're pressuring me to, you know, to buy me out for sure,” Babiarz said, noting he gets offers every week.
That’s the story of the citrus industry in the Salt River Valley.
“In the Valley here, it's because the citrus is primarily grown on flat land and that's a great place to build houses and shopping malls,” said Glenn Wright, an associate professor at University of Arizona, who works with citrus and other fruits at the school’s cooperative extension in Yuma.
He adds, “In fact, the old U of A Citrus Ag Center, which was originally in Tempe, is now underneath Arizona Mills Mall.”
Wright says that, even in its heyday, Arizona lagged behind Florida and California in terms of citrus production.
“So we were never as big as the big two, but for a while, we were about the same size as Texas. Now we’re quite a bit smaller,” he said.
He says in the 1970s, there was about 70,000 acres of citrus in Arizona, but the industry was actually more profitable when the footprint dropped to around 35,000 acres three decades ago.
There’s about 6,000 acres of citrus today, and most of that is in Yuma County, though there are still some operations scattered throughout the Valley and on the Fort McDowell and Gila River reservations.
The shift to Yuma
As the number of overall agricultural acres shrank, the industry shifted its focus away from Maricopa County. For instance, the trucks needed to ship the fruit stopped coming.
“They were finding it harder and harder to find semi-trailers that were willing to come to Mesa Citrus, for example, several years ago and fill up with citrus because there was nothing that those semi-trailers were bringing here,” Wright said.
These days, lemons are the state’s main citrus export.
There’s a few reasons for that, said Wright, including the fact that Yuma provides desirable growing conditions for lemons.
“Usually, most years, there's more profit in lemons, although that hasn't been the case in the last couple of years,” he said.
These days, Arizonans lemon growers face competition from Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
“And so they come in and sell fruit, sometimes at lower prices, either at the beginning or at the end of our season, and that usually drives prices down,” Wright said.
Citrus in Maricopa County has been largely relegated to front yards, farmers markets and the few remaining larger nurseries that sell trees or run U-pick operations.
D for development
James Truman’s family first moved to the West Valley in the 1940s and eventually owned 80 acres of citrus.
“And 80 acres of raw land which was leased to other farming entities in the area who grew cotton, watermelons, lettuce, potatoes, any crop that they felt they could make a dollar at,” added Truman, who said his family eventually got into the dairy business as well.
Much of the family land has since been sold off, but he’s still holding onto 15 acres with plans to start a U-pick operation. He grows a variety of unique citrus that are to find like Palestinian sweet limes, pomelos and Kaffir limes, which produces leaves used in Thai cuisine.
But, like Babiarz, Truman is feeling development squeeze him in on all sides.
“What happens is you're sitting on a piece of land that you've farmed for many years, perhaps decades, and then all of a sudden, one of the neighbors has sold out and houses pop up,” said Truman, who used to manage a UA citrus center in the West Valley.
He said all of those homes can lead to concerns from new residents about dust, pesticides and noise from the remaining agricultural operations.
Truman says he understands why other farmers have left as that residential encroachment compounds other issues, like labor problems and water issues.
“When someone comes to you and you've been struggling with making money some years and making money other years, and all of a sudden somebody shows up with millions and millions of dollars for your land, you kind of say, 'I'm out of here,'” he said.
Despite the industry’s shrinking footprint, the UA's Wright says there are still nostalgic reasons for keeping citrus in Arizona’s five C’s.
“Of course, we have millions of trees in people's yards, and we have acres and acres of homeowner associations out in the Mesa area and up in Scottsdale, etc., that were built on former citrus orchards, or the city of Glendale has a park which has an orchard in it,” he said.
But, back in Mesa, Babiarz is more blunt.
“Basically, the five C's of Arizona, you can wipe out the C for cattle and you can pretty much wipe out the C for citrus, you know, and just change it with a D for development,” he said. “The 3 C's and the one big D, you know?
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The “five C’s” — cattle, citrus, copper, cotton and climate — are a snapshot of Arizona history. While they aren't the main sectors of the state’s economy today, they speak to a time when Arizona came into its own, and for that, they will always matter. -
KJZZ examines the storied history of the state’s five C’s — copper, cotton, cattle, citrus and climate — and the role they still play in modern-day Arizona. -
KJZZ examines the storied history of the state’s five C’s — copper, cotton, cattle, citrus and climate — and the role they still play in modern-day Arizona. -
KJZZ examines the storied history of the state’s five C’s — copper, cotton, cattle, citrus and climate — and the role they still play in modern-day Arizona. -
KJZZ examines the storied history of the state’s five C’s — copper, cotton, cattle, citrus and climate — and the role they still play in modern-day Arizona.
