SoCal Berry Growers plans to shut down six farms across Ventura and Oxnard by the end of January 2027, laying off 572 workers in a move that comes just months after employees voted to join the United Farm Workers. The company notified the city of Oxnard of the planned closures and layoffs on Oct. 31, and said in a letter that the farms would close between Jan. 11 and Jan. 25, 2027.
According to the Ventura County Star, the company identified six separate farms scheduled to close, four of them near Olivas Park Drive south of the Ventura city limits, one north of Oxnard at West Gonzales Road and Harbor Boulevard, and one southeast of Oxnard near Ormond Beach and the Point Mugu Naval Air Station. The properties grow strawberries for Driscoll's, and the company has not said whether it owns additional farms that will remain open. California law requires at least 60 days' notice to state and local agencies before layoffs of 50 or more people or a full facility closure.
The closures are planned for more than five months after the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board ruled against SoCal Berry Growers' challenge to a unionization petition, affirming the result of a vote in which employees chose to join the United Farm Workers. That ruling came down on Aug. 6, the same report notes, after the company had challenged the petition by alleging UFW misconduct. The vote itself, held in July 2026, included 332 eligible workers, slightly more than half of whom had signed union-support cards ahead of the election.
Union Points to Timing, Vows Legal Action
United Farm Workers Vice President Roman Pinal said the union believes the planned layoffs are connected to the vote, and that the UFW will use its legal options to defend members' rights, the Ventura County Star reported. The organizing drive marked the first successful unionization at a Ventura County farm in a decade, according to the same report.
Rob Roy, president and general counsel of the Ventura County Agricultural Association, represented SoCal Berry Growers early in the unionization process but said he did not advise the company about the planned closures and does not know why it is shutting down its farms or whether the union vote played a role. Roy estimated that far less than 1% of Ventura County's agricultural workforce is unionized and said he could identify only one other county farm with workers represented by the UFW.
Louise Lampara, chief executive of the Farm Bureau of Ventura County, likewise said she did not know why SoCal Berry Growers is closing the six farms. She told the Ventura County Star that increased costs can make a company unable to sustain itself, and that the county's agriculture sector is at a critical point because returns are decreasing.
A Shaky Strawberry Market Across the County
The closures arrive amid a strained picture for the county's signature crop. Strawberries have been Ventura County's top crop by total sales for decades and generated $808 million in wholesale grower revenue in 2025, more than triple the county's avocado revenue that year, but strawberry farming has become much harder in recent years. The average Ventura County strawberry grower lost money last year, and growing costs exceeded revenue by about $8 million countywide, leaving strawberry growers with a collective loss of roughly 1% of revenue, per the farm bureau's findings.
A farm bureau report identified rising water, labor and government-regulation compliance costs as outpacing revenue that has failed to keep up with inflation. Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Korinne Bell said she expects more farmland than ever to be left fallow this year due to fuel and fertilizer costs and the prospect of heavy rains and flooding, and she said she had never seen as many vacant fields as in the past year.
That squeeze is showing up even as the county's overall agricultural numbers look strong on paper. Ventura County agriculture generated $2.4 billion in total revenue in 2025, a record and a 4% increase over 2024, as reported by the Thousand Oaks Acorn. But that revenue has still declined 19% over the prior decade after adjusting for inflation, and the county's irrigated farmland shrank from 98,732 acres in 2024 to 98,470 acres in 2025. Bell has predicted that farm revenue will decline further in the 2026 crop report set for release next year.
Echoes of Past Oxnard Farm Closures
SoCal Berry Growers' planned shutdown is not the first time a large Oxnard-area grower has cut hundreds of jobs at once. Mandalay Berry Farms previously announced it was closing and laying off 565 employees across nine ranches in Oxnard, in a case where the report noted none of those employees were represented by unions. Around the same time, Hiji Brothers, Seaview Growers and Richview Inc. closed together, affecting roughly 260 employees, according to the Ventura County Star archive.
In an earlier case involving Dole, the Los Angeles Times reported the company closed a packing and cooling facility in Oxnard and laid off 172 workers, most of whom were represented by the United Farm Workers. Then-county Agricultural Commissioner Henry Gonzales suggested at the time that Dole could simply be shifting toward less labor-intensive vegetable crops rather than abandoning the acreage altogether. The supplied evidence does not establish that those earlier closures shared the same circumstances as SoCal Berry Growers' current plans.
Under California's WARN Act, employers planning a mass layoff, plant closure or relocation may be required to give advance notice, according to the state's Employment Development Department.
