Citrus (except Orange) Groves — U.S. Industry-Group Primer
NAICS 2022 code 11132 (NAICS = North American Industry Classification System)
This is a rollup page. NAICS 11132 is a five-digit "NAICS industry" that contains exactly one six-digit national industry, so this level and its child are effectively the same thing. For the full detail — economics, companies, regulation, risks, and how to invest — see the child primer, 111320 Citrus (except Orange) Groves.
1. Overview
NAICS 11132 is the farming of every commercial citrus fruit except the orange: lemons, limes, grapefruit, and the fast-growing easy-peel mandarins and tangerines (the fruit behind brands like Halos and Cuties). These are permanent tree crops — a grower plants an orchard, waits three to five years for it to bear, then harvests it for decades — and the economics are those of a branded fresh-produce grower, not a bulk commodity farmer.[1][4]
Because this five-digit code has only one six-digit child (111320), everything true of the child is true here. The one distinction worth knowing: California now grows the large majority of U.S. non-orange citrus while Florida's once-dominant crop has collapsed under citrus greening disease, fresh mandarins are a growth story, grapefruit is in decline, and limes are almost entirely imported.[1][7]
2. What's inside — and why this level equals its one child
In the NAICS hierarchy, code 11132 ("NAICS industry," five digits) sits one rung above the "national industry" (six digits). Most five-digit codes fan out into several six-digit children; this one does not. It contains a single child:
| Child code | Name | Relationship to 11132 |
|---|---|---|
| 111320 | Citrus (except Orange) Groves | The only child — 1:1 with this level |
Because there is exactly one child, NAICS 11132 and NAICS 111320 cover an identical set of establishments. Every grapefruit, lemon, lime, tangerine, mandarin, tangelo, citron, and kumquat grove counted at this level is counted at 111320, and vice versa. There is no additional activity that rolls into 11132 beyond what 111320 already contains. (The sibling five-digit code 11131 Orange Groves is a separate industry group and is not part of this level, even though the same companies often grow both.)[4]
Practically, this page exists only to complete the taxonomy. For substance, read the 111320 primer.
3. Size of this level
Our ingested federal file for code 11132 carries no statistics — no firm count, employment, payroll, receipts, or size standard at the five-digit level. We say so plainly rather than invent a number. Because this level equals its single child, the child's figures (coded to 111320) are the correct gauge of this level's size; they are reproduced in brief here and sourced fully in the 111320 primer.
- Production and value (2024–25 season; USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, NASS). U.S. utilized production of the three non-orange types this code covers ran to roughly 1.23 million tons of tangerines/mandarins, 1.12 million tons of lemons, and 300,000 tons of grapefruit — about 2.6–2.7 million tons combined, now more than all U.S. orange tonnage. Total U.S. citrus crop value (all types, including oranges) was about $2.84 billion, down 4% year over year.[1][2]
- Where it's grown. California dominates — roughly 64,900 acres of mandarins/hybrids, 49,800 acres of lemons, and 8,200 acres of grapefruit bearing in 2024 — with a small Arizona lemon crop and a mostly-grapefruit Texas footprint. Florida citrus land fell from about 748,555 acres in 2004 to roughly 274,705 in 2024.[3][6][7]
- A structural undercount caveat. Standard "how many companies" datasets miss this industry by design: the Census Bureau's Statistics of U.S. Businesses and Nonemployer Statistics both exclude Crop Production (NAICS 111), which USDA enumerates separately in its Census of Agriculture. Commercial aggregators list on the order of ~600 citrus-except-orange establishments with employees, but that captures neither the long tail of tiny sole-proprietor and family groves (small/individual ownership dominates the count) nor the reality that a few large private and cooperative entities hold much of the acreage and volume. Physical production, not business registrations, is the meaningful size gauge here.[16][17]
4. Investable universe (where value concentrates)
With a single child, there is no "spread across children" to map — all investable value sits inside 111320, and it is thin on public markets. The near-pure listed name is Limoneira (Nasdaq: LMNR), a lemon-and-real-estate business rather than a pure grove company. The largest owners are not investable: The Wonderful Company / Wonderful Citrus (private; America's largest citrus grower, ~74,000 farmed acres across orange and non-orange) and Sunkist Growers (a member-owned marketing cooperative of 1,000+ family growers). Alico (Nasdaq: ALCO) is exiting citrus to become a Florida land company, and Fresh Del Monte (NYSE: FDP) and Dole (NYSE: DOLE) offer only diluted, indirect exposure. See the 111320 primer for the full table and the case on each.[8][10][11][12][13][14]
5. How the money works
Identical to the child. A grove is a long-lived capital asset whose revenue is roughly marketable boxes × realized price (equivalently bearing acres × yield × price, minus growing, harvest, and marketing cost). The value drivers specific to this "except-orange" basket: a fresh-market premium (lemons and easy-peel mandarins sell overwhelmingly fresh, paying far more per ton than juice), brand and proprietary "club" varieties (Halos, Cuties, branded seedless lemons), a labor- and water-heavy cost stack (labor is on the order of 38 cents of every farm-expense dollar; prime regions are arid and irrigation-dependent), slow supply and sharp cycles (years to bearing), and land and water rights as hidden value. Full treatment is in the 111320 primer.[8][11][15]
6. Demand drivers
The long-term trend favors lemons, limes, and easy-peel mandarins over traditional grapefruit and breakfast oranges. Since 1970, lemon availability has roughly doubled and lime availability rose about 24-fold; the seedless mandarin boom is the segment's growth engine; grapefruit is in secular decline; and rising lime demand is met almost entirely by imports from Mexico. Year-round retail availability increasingly runs through imports (USDA forecast tangerine/mandarin imports near half of fresh consumption), so demand growth can benefit importers, packers, and brands as much as domestic grove owners.[8][9][18][19]
7. Regulation
Same regime as the child. The defining rules are plant-health quarantines run by USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and state agencies to fight Huanglongbing (HLB, "citrus greening"), a bacterial disease with no cure. Layered on top: the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) Produce Safety Rule under FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act); EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) pesticide rules under FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act); Department of Labor farm-labor and H-2A guest-worker rules (mandated wages, employer-paid housing); California groundwater limits under SGMA (Sustainable Groundwater Management Act); and federal crop insurance via USDA's Risk Management Agency. Details in the 111320 primer.[15][20][21][22][23][19]
8. Consolidation
Fragmented at the grove level but concentrated in commercial channels, with the center of gravity shifting hard toward California and a few large, integrated growers (Wonderful, Sun Pacific, and the Sunkist cooperative). A packer or brand can control market access without owning equivalent acreage — Limoneira sold 4.7 million cartons of lemons in 2025 with ~78% procured from third-party growers. The other half of the story is regional attrition: Florida grapefruit is collapsing from HLB and hurricanes, Texas is small and freeze-exposed, and Alico's 2025 exit signals where the Florida side is headed. See 111320 for the full dynamics.[8][10][11][12]
9. Risks
The same risks that define the child define this level: citrus greening (HLB), the existential, cure-less disease that destroyed most of Florida's crop and threatens California; weather and climate (freezes, hurricanes, drought, heat) hitting long-lived trees with no quick recovery; water cost and availability under SGMA and drought; labor cost and availability for a hand-picked crop; price cyclicality and import competition (limes and off-season lemons from Mexico, Argentina, and Chile); long capital lead time; the structural decline in grapefruit demand; and customer/packer concentration plus private-company opacity. Full discussion in the 111320 primer.[7][9][15][19][20][17]
10. How to invest and outlook
Because this level is its one child, the playbook is the 111320 playbook. Public routes are limited: Limoneira (LMNR) is the lone near-pure play (analyze it as lemons-plus-real-estate-and-water); Alico (ALCO) is now a land story; Fresh Del Monte (FDP) and Dole (DOLE) are diluted; there is no citrus ETF (exchange-traded fund), and the two largest owners cannot be bought at all. Most capital actually goes private: direct grove ownership or leases, farmland funds syndicating permanent-crop citrus, joint ventures and orchard-renovation credit, stand-alone California water rights, and ag-tech/inputs (HLB-tolerant rootstock, disease treatment, mechanization) as picks-and-shovels bets.
Outlook. The healthy part is California-based, fresh-market, branded mandarins and lemons; the weak part is grapefruit and the Florida/Texas footprint, in structural decline. The decade turns on (1) whether HLB research delivers resistant varieties or a treatment, (2) how tightly California water rules squeeze acreage and cost, (3) labor and immigration policy, and (4) import competition in lemons and limes. The underwriting trap is confusing gross acreage or land value with durable free cash flow. For the complete version of this section — the full public/private menu, diligence checklist, and forward judgment — see the 111320 Citrus (except Orange) Groves primer.[2][11][12]
Sources
Drawn from the child primer (NAICS 111320); numbering matches that primer.
- USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Citrus Fruits 2024 Summary (August 2025). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/cfrt0825.pdf
- USDA NASS, Crop Production (April 2026). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/crop0426.pdf
- Citrus Industry Magazine, "U.S. Citrus Production and Value by State" (2024). https://citrusindustry.net/2024/11/20/u-s-citrus-production-value-state/
- U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 NAICS Manual — definition and scope of code 111320 and adjacent codes. https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
- USDA NASS Pacific Regional Office / California Dept. of Food and Agriculture, 2024 California Citrus Acreage Report (August 2024). https://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publications/Specialty_and_Other_Releases/Citrus/Acreage/202408citac.pdf
- University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute (2025); Southern Ag Today (2024); FarmTogether — HLB impact and Florida acreage decline. https://epi.ufl.edu/2025/11/10/citrus-greening-disease-in-florida-what-to-know/; https://southernagtoday.org/2024/01/05/citrus-greening-hurricanes-and-the-decline-of-the-florida-citrus-industry/
- The Wonderful Company / Wonderful Citrus — company profile (~74,000 farmed acres; Wonderful Halos, Seedless Lemons). https://www.wonderful.com/who-we-are/; https://www.wonderfulcitrus.com/why-wonderful
- Tridge / Agronometrics / USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), Citrus Annual (Mexico) — >99% of U.S. limes imported. https://www.tridge.com/intelligences/lime/import
- Sunkist Growers, Incorporated — cooperative overview (1,000+ CA + AZ growers, founded 1893). https://sunkist.com/
- Limoneira Company, Form 10-K FY2025 (SEC EDGAR) and FY2024 results — ~3,100 planted lemon acres, 4.7M cartons sold (~78% third-party), FY2024 revenue ~$191.5M. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1342423/000134242325000039/lmnr-20251031.htm
- Alico, Inc., Form 10-K FY2025 (SEC EDGAR) and "Strategic Transformation" (Jan 2025) — citrus wind-down and land pivot. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/3545/000000354525000140/alco-20250930.htm
- Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. (NYSE: FDP), Form 10-K FY2025 (SEC EDGAR). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1047340/000104734026000015/fdp-20251226.htm
- Dole plc (NYSE: DOLE) — company/stock overview. https://www.doleplc.com/
- American Farm Bureau Federation, "Debunking H-2A Myths"; USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), "U.S. Fruit and Vegetable Industries Try To Cope With Rising Labor Costs" (2022). https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/december/u-s-fruit-and-vegetable-industries-try-to-cope-with-rising-labor-costs
- U.S. Census Bureau, "About SUSB" and "Nonemployer Statistics" — both exclude Crop Production (NAICS 111). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb/about.html
- SICCODE / NAICS business-database aggregators — establishment count for NAICS 111320 (~600 with employees). https://siccode.com/naics-code/111320/citrus
- USDA ERS, "Grapefruit and Oranges Drove Decline in U.S. Fresh Citrus Availability from 1970 to 2022" (2023). https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/106811
- USDA FAS, Citrus: World Markets and Trade (2026). https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circulars/citrus.pdf
- USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), "Citrus Greening and Asian Citrus Psyllid" (7 CFR 301.76). https://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant-pests-diseases/citrus-diseases/citrus-greening-and-asian-citrus-psyllid
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), "What the Produce Safety Rule Means" (FSMA). https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/what-produce-safety-rule-means-consumers
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), "Agricultural Worker Protection Standard (WPS)" (FIFRA). https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-worker-safety/agricultural-worker-protection-standard-wps
- USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA), "Specialty Crops" — federal crop insurance covering citrus. https://www.rma.usda.gov/about-crop-insurance/highlighted-initiatives-plans/specialty-crops
- California Department of Water Resources, "Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)." https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Groundwater-Management/SGMA-Groundwater-Management