It's a common misconception that farmers have nearly infinite flexibility to choose crops, cultivation methods and pricing strategies. I've heard this sort of thing a lot over the years, particularly from folks who are critical of the amount of water and chemicals many growers use. Tell farmers to stop doing something they regard as necessary to produce a particular crop, the argument goes, and they'll just shift to something else.

What we often tend to forget, or at least fail to fully appreciate, is that farming is not merely a lifestyle or a philanthropic undertaking. For commercial growers -- as opposed to hobbyists raising a couple acres of avocado trees or a few chickens -- it's a business. And unless farmers can make a profit growing a particular crop in a particular way, they simply won't do it.

A comment posted below raises that subject indirectly, the writer asking whether Ventura county farmers are willing to remain sufficiently committed to agriculture to forego potentially more profitable uses for their land, i.e. urban development.

It's an interesting topic, and one that I'll be exploring in future series installments. But a good introduction to the subject of farming as a business, and the many economic forces converging on local agriculture in particular, is provided by a recent report compiled for the Workforce Investment Board. Titled "The Future of Ventura County Agriculture," it offers good insight into the pressures created by rising land and labor costs, global competition and regulation. And it offers several scenarios for farming's future here, none of them particularly rosy, as rising costs and competition for market share from lower-priced foreign production squeeze the profit margins that can spell the difference between a field of strawberries and a field of tract homes.