Santa Barbara County's 1916 Crop Report was a single typewritten page of values for some odd and questionable "crops" like petroleum, motion picture films, mineral water and, oddly enough, California sea lions, which today are a protected species.
Still black-and-white and typewritten, except for the cover shown here, the 1968 Santa Barbara County Crop Report was eight pages long. It included crops no longer produced in the county or in such low quantity they aren't counted separately.
The 2021 Santa Barbara County Crop Report is a full-color, 24-page booklet filled with graphs, charts, photographs and narrative text about the county's agricultural bounty.
The 2021 Santa Barbara County Crop Report is a full-color, 24-page booklet filled with graphs, charts, photographs and narrative text about the county's agricultural bounty.
Santa Barbara County’s Agriculture Production Report for 2021 is a far cry from the vast majority of other crop reports in the Agriculture/Weights and Measures Department archives, which span 105 years since 1916.
The report released Monday is a 24-page, full-color report filled with graphics, charts, photographs and narrative text to explain some of the things affecting agriculture and the efforts being taken to mitigate them.
In contrast, the 1916 report is one page and typewritten, with notes handwritten upside-down at the bottom, and it lists things that wouldn’t be considered in an agricultural report today — including one that likely would appall sensibilities today.
Top of the list in the 1916 report is petroleum, with a value of just under $4 million, followed by beans at a little more than $3 million and sugar beets at more than $1.9 million.
Still black-and-white and typewritten, except for the cover shown here, the 1968 Santa Barbara County Crop Report was eight pages long. It included crops no longer produced in the county or in such low quantity they aren't counted separately.
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Then the value drops dramatically to No. 4 on the list — motion picture films at $720,000.
The list also includes manufactured products at $624,000, mineral water at $127,000, minerals at $115,876 and, last on the list, California sea lions at $5,000, all contributing to a total value of nearly $14.8 million.
Jump ahead half the distance to 2021 and you’ll land on the 1968 Crop Report, still typewritten, except for the cover page, but now expanded to eight pages without listing values for petroleum, movies, manufactured products, mineral water, minerals and sea lions.
Like the most recent versions, the report also separates out various crops and values under specific categories, which at that time were vegetables, field crops, fruits and nuts, nursery products, livestock and poultry and seed crops.
Back then, strawberries were far from the top crop in the county, with a total value of just over $4.6 million.
Cattle and calves claimed the crown that year with a value of more than $20.7 million. The value of the lemon crop was nearly double that of strawberries at nearly $8.5 million.
Items included in the 1968 report are no longer produced in the county or not enough to merit its own listing, like milk with a value of just over $4.8 million, wool valued at $44,300, oranges at $51,500, sugar beets at almost $1.5 million and corn silage at $378,000.
And the overall value of the county’s agricultural products that year: Just under $90.3 million.
Santa Barbara County's 1916 Crop Report was a single typewritten page of values for some odd and questionable "crops" like petroleum, motion picture films, mineral water and, oddly enough, California sea lions, which today are a protected species.
