After years of declining production, California’s strawberry crop is ripe for an industry turnaround.
2026 could be the crop’s most productive year in a decade. Record-setting temperatures in February and March led to springtime harvests that began much earlier than expected. “It bumped the season up by two or three weeks,” says Mark Bolda, the University of California Cooperative Extension’s strawberry adviser. In the Watsonville-Salinas district — the so-called “Strawberry Capital of the World,” where 90% of the country’s strawberries are picked — growers had already harvested 2.9 million crates by early April. That’s 10 times more strawberries than the 230,000 crates that were packed during the same time period in 2024.
Monterey County wasn’t the only area to see a bump in production. Growers in Oxnard and Santa Maria also reported larger-than-expected harvests this spring. Meanwhile, the University of California has continued testing new commercial varieties via its strawberry breeding program. These include disease-resistant cultivars like the UC Eclipse, the UC Surfline, and the UC Golden Gate. Another variety, the UC Monarch, was developed with mechanical harvesting in mind, meaning it can potentially cut down on the high costs of human labor.
Combined with the workhorse varieties that consumers already know and love, these new varieties — with their high yields, improved taste, and resistance to fungal infections like Fusarium wilt — may turn 2026 into a bountiful year for California’s strawberry industry… especially if favorable weather conditions continue to boost the crop.