Fruit and Tree Nut Combination Farming (U.S.) — NAICS 111336

A plain-language primer for investors and operators. Core figures come from federal data; forward-looking statements are labeled as judgments, not facts.

1. Overview

NAICS 111336 covers farms that grow a mix of fruits and tree nuts where no single crop family dominates — a diversified orchard operation rather than a pure almond, apple, or orange grower [1]. ("NAICS" is the North American Industry Classification System, the federal code set for industries.) Picture a Central Valley operation running almonds alongside walnuts and stone fruit, or a grove mixing citrus with avocados, where no one fruit or nut family is more than half of crop value.

At its core this is a real-asset, perennial-crop business built on land, water, long-lived trees, seasonal labor, crop biology, and the packing-and-distribution chain that gets fruit to market. Owners earn returns two ways: the annual margin on the harvest, and the value of the underlying farmland and water rights. Returns are cyclical and tied to commodity prices, export demand, weather, and above all water. The segment sits inside one of U.S. agriculture's higher-value corners: fruit, tree nut, and berry farms sold $34.2 billion in 2022 [2].

The ways to participate differ sharply by investor type, and neither dominates. Private capital holds most of the ownership: family farms, a few very large private growers, grower cooperatives, and institutional farmland funds that buy orchards and lease them to operators. Public-market exposure is indirect and thin — there is no pure-play listed "combination orchard" company; the closest listed proxies are farmland real estate investment trusts (REITs — companies that own land and lease it out) and diversified produce companies. The central question for either type of investor is the same: can an operator produce reliable yields, sell quality product before it spoils, control water and labor costs, and earn an adequate return on land and long-lived plantings?

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. 111336 is the "combination" slice of NAICS group 1113, Fruit and Tree Nut Farming. A farm lands here only when it grows several fruits and/or tree nuts and no single fruit family or tree-nut family reaches one-half of crop value [1]. It is, by design, a residual/diversified category. Typical combinations pair crops like almonds, pistachios, or walnuts with stone fruit, citrus, grapes, or berries. The production chain runs from nursery and planting through orchard management, harvest, cooling, grading, packing, and marketing to retailers, foodservice, processors, or exporters.

What it excludes — most fruit and nut acreage actually sits in the specialized sibling codes, because most orchards are dominated by one crop:

• 111310 Orange Groves; 111320 Citrus (except Orange) Groves
• 111331 Apple Orchards; 111332 Grape Vineyards
• 111333 Strawberry Farming; 111334 Berry (except Strawberry) Farming
• 111335 Tree Nut Farming (almonds, walnuts, pistachios, pecans grown on their own)
• 111339 Other Noncitrus Fruit Farming [1]

So a pure almond ranch is 111335, a stand-alone vineyard is 111332, and only a genuinely mixed fruit-and-nut operation is 111336. Also excluded: drying, canning, and other processing (food manufacturing), fresh-produce wholesaling (trade), and contract farm-management or farm-labor services — even though the largest players are vertically integrated across growing, packing, and marketing [1].

Ownership mix. The segment is overwhelmingly private and family-run — across the broader fruit/nut/berry category, 93% of farms were family farms in 2022 [2]. It is barbell-shaped: tens of thousands of small operators at one end, and a small number of very large private growers and institutional landowners at the other. Large operations carry outsized economic weight — nationally, farms with at least $1 million in gross cash farm income are under 4% of all U.S. farms but produce about half of total agricultural output value [4]. Federal business datasets understate the industry (see §3).

3. How big it is

Our ground-truth federal statistics for 111336 specifically are thin. The only figure published at this exact code is the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) size standard of $5 million in average annual receipts — the ceiling below which one of these farms counts as a "small business" for federal programs [3]. That is a qualification threshold, not a measure of industry revenue or size. We do not hold a separately published national count of 111336 combination farms, their acreage, employment, or profit; because this is a residual category, the Census of Agriculture folds most fruit/nut activity into the specialized codes. We flag that gap rather than invent a number.

What can be sized reliably is the parent group — fruit, tree nut, and berry farming — from USDA's (U.S. Department of Agriculture) 2022 Census of Agriculture. Treat these as context for the neighborhood, not as the market size of 111336 itself [2]:

• 110,821 farms, 6.56 million acres, $34.2 billion in sales — sales up 20% since 2017, acres up 10% [2].
• Geographic concentration is extreme. Three states — California, Washington, Florida — made 83% of sales and 76% of acres. California alone booked $23.1 billion (about 68%), then Washington $3.79B, Florida $1.44B, Oregon $890M, New York $721M [2].
• Tree nuts are the growth engine: nut acreage rose 23% since 2017 while citrus fell 7%. Almonds cover 1.63M acres (half of all nut acreage, nearly all in California), pistachios 527,000 acres (+53%), English walnuts 402,000 acres (99% California) [7].
• Most farms are small. 78% of specializing farms had sales-plus-government-payments under $100,000, and 43% under $10,000; only 6% cleared $1 million. Average farm size is 149 acres versus 463 for U.S. farms overall [2].
• Average net cash farm income was $59,810, and only 47% of these farms had positive net income in 2022 [2]. Operators skew older (average age 59.6) [2].

The undercount caveat. Federal business-establishment series — County Business Patterns and the Statistics of U.S. Businesses — largely exclude crop production (NAICS 111), so they do not count these farms at all; the authoritative census is USDA's, not the Economic Census. And because most operators are tiny, any employer-based tally would badly understate the industry, while a simple farm count underweights the handful of large private growers where the dollars concentrate. Read the count and the dollars together.

4. The investable universe

There is no pure public play on diversified fruit-and-nut combination farming. Listed exposure comes through two doors: farmland REITs that own orchards and collect rent, and diversified produce companies that grow, pack, and distribute (mostly around one or two headline crops). The genuinely diversified orchards themselves are overwhelmingly private.

Major private, cooperative, and institutional owners are where combination orchards actually concentrate:

• The Wonderful Company (private; Resnick family) — the largest U.S. nut grower, farming roughly 250,000 acres of almonds and pistachios and integrated across growing, processing, and branding (Wonderful Pistachios, Wonderful Halos citrus, POM pomegranates) [15].
• Institutional farmland managers — Nuveen Natural Capital (a TIAA company; TIAA is the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association), among the world's largest farmland managers with roughly $12.4 billion in farmland assets, owns California orchard land (almonds, pistachios, wine grapes) leased to operators [16]. Peers include Manulife/Hancock and specialist funds.
• Stemilt (family-owned) — vertically integrated across apples, pears, and cherries, with orchards, packing, and distribution [17].
• Driscoll's (family-owned) — a berry company built on proprietary genetics and a large network of independent growers; a brand-and-genetics platform more than a landowner [18].
• Sunkist — a grower-owned citrus marketing cooperative connecting thousands of family farms to buyers [19].
• Thousands of family growers across California's Central Valley, Washington, Florida, Oregon, and the Southwest.

The takeaway: private ownership is broader than owning dirt. Capital sits in land, trees, water, packing, cold chain, brands, genetics, and cooperatives — each a different risk-and-return profile.

5. How the money works

Combination orchards are perennial-crop producers, so the economics look more like long-lived infrastructure than annual row-cropping. The revenue equation is roughly:

yield per bearing acre × realized price × saleable packout

• Long build, long harvest. Trees take roughly 3–7 years from planting to full bearing, then produce for decades. That means heavy upfront capital and years of "non-bearing" cost before the first real crop — effectively a bet on prices and water a decade out. A single poor crop year can gut cash flow even when the land and trees hold long-term value.
• Labor is the biggest operating cost. In the broad census category, hired labor alone was about 26% of production expenses ($7.6B of $29.9B) [2]; USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) estimates that wages plus contract labor together run around 40% of production expenses for fruit and tree nut operations specifically [5]. Water, fertilizer, chemicals, equipment, harvesting, packing, refrigeration, transport, and financing round out the cost stack.
• The metrics that matter: bearing acres and tree age, yield per acre, crop mix and harvest timing, packout rate (the share of harvest that grades saleable), grower price versus realized selling price, labor cost per unit, water availability and cost, packinghouse utilization, and owned-versus-contracted supply.
• Diversification is the whole point. Spreading across fruits and nuts with different price and harvest cycles dampens the boom-bust swing that hits single-crop growers — a structural hedge, at the cost of the scale efficiencies of specialization.
• Two profit streams: crop margin and land. Operators earn the harvest margin; landowners (REITs, institutions) earn rent plus land and water appreciation. That land-return component is why farmland funds invest here even when crop margins are thin. California orchard land with reliable water has traded around $18,000–$25,000 per acre, versus $4,000–$15,000 for groundwater-only land — the spread is essentially the price of water security [20].
• Water is a fixed cost you cannot skip. Trees must be watered every year or they die, so water demand is inelastic; almonds, for instance, need on the order of 40+ acre-inches per season. When water is scarce, growers steer it to the highest-value trees and fallow everything else [25].
• Cyclicality is severe. Oversupply crushes prices, forcing orchard removals, which eventually tightens supply and lifts prices — a multi-year hog-cycle. Almond grower prices fell from about $2.25/lb in 2020 into a prolonged slump, orchards that once sold for ~$60,000/acre dropped into the low-to-mid $30,000s, and growers pulled thousands of acres, with bankruptcies reported in 2024 [20][21].

6. What drives demand

• Exports. Tree nuts are an export machine: the U.S. ships more than 70% of its almond crop and about 75% of its pistachios abroad [23]. California's almond exports were worth $4.95 billion and pistachios $2.93 billion in 2024 [24]. Foreign demand — especially India (roughly half of exported U.S. almonds) and China (a top pistachio buyer) — helps set the price for the whole domestic crop [23].
• Health, snacking, and convenience. Nuts and fresh fruit ride long-run shifts toward protein, snacking, and "better-for-you" foods, plus branded and value-added formats (dried fruit, juices, guacamole, packaged snacks). But the health narrative does not guarantee volume growth: USDA research found U.S. per-capita fruit availability declined 14% from 2003 through 2021 [6]. The reliable growth tends to be category-specific — premium varieties, convenient formats, better shelf life, stronger brands, and year-round supply.
• Income and population growth abroad. Rising middle-class demand in Asia is the multi-decade demand story for tree nuts — a forward-looking judgment, but one consistent with the export data above [23].
• Substitution and competition. Buyers switch across origins — China has leaned toward Australian almonds, and Chile, Iran, and others compete in walnuts and pistachios — which caps U.S. pricing power [23].
• Weather-driven supply shocks. Because supply is inelastic in the short run, a frost, heat spike, or short water year can swing prices more than demand does.

7. Regulation

• Water — the binding constraint. California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA, 2014) is progressively curtailing groundwater pumping in over-drafted basins, forcing orchard removals and fallowing; perennial crops absorb a disproportionate share of the cuts [31][25]. Record acreage has been fallowed in dry years [26], and SGMA is expected to permanently shrink irrigated acreage in the San Joaquin Valley (a forward-looking judgment, though the trajectory is well established) [25].
• Food safety. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Produce Safety Rule (21 CFR Part 112) sets standards for agricultural water, worker hygiene, and handling on farms with covered-produce sales above $25,000 [27]; compliance runs roughly 1.3% of revenue for California fruit/vegetable growers [32]. A 2024 FDA update revised the pre-harvest agricultural water requirements, adding system assessments for contamination risk [28].
• Pesticides. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pesticide registration, labeling, and permitted uses under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) [29].
• Labor and immigration. The workforce is heavily immigrant and increasingly sourced through the H-2A agricultural guestworker visa, whose "adverse effect wage rate," housing, and transportation rules raise labor costs; immigration enforcement is a recurring supply risk [30].
• Trade and plant health. Retaliatory tariffs directly hit nut and fruit exporters. 2025 measures included an added 10% Chinese tariff on U.S. nuts; University of California analysts estimated new tariffs could cost the U.S. nut and fruit industries over $3 billion, with pistachios alone exposed to roughly $384 million [22][23]. India's long-standing 100% walnut tariff still effectively shuts that market [23]. Phytosanitary rules and border delays can change a crop's economics overnight.
• Farm programs. Federal crop insurance and the Farm Bill's specialty-crop provisions matter, but government payments are a smaller share of income here than in row crops [2].

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

• Fragmented at the farm, concentrated downstream. Farm production stays fragmented because land is dispersed, most farms are family-owned, and crop biology limits how fast anyone can expand. Packing, cold storage, logistics, brands, and retail relationships are more scalable — and more concentrated. The strongest advantages are secure land and water, reliable labor, high-yielding or proprietary varieties, efficient cold-chain infrastructure, food-safety systems, and brands with pricing power.
• A barbell tilting toward scale. Alongside the long tail of small growers, a few large private operators — led by The Wonderful Company at ~250,000 acres — command outsized share of nuts through integrated growing, processing, branding, and export [15].
• Institutional land buyers. Farmland funds — Nuveen/TIAA, Manulife/Hancock, Gladstone Land — have accumulated orchard acreage over the past decade, separating land ownership from farming and professionalizing the asset class [8][16].
• Consolidation is more visible downstream. Mission Produce's 2026 acquisition of Calavo Growers consolidated avocado sourcing, packing, distribution, and prepared foods [11]. The base case is that further consolidation concentrates in packing, marketing, genetics, and branded distribution, while farm ownership stays comparatively fragmented (a judgment).
• The current downturn is forcing turnover. Depressed almond and citrus prices, higher costs, and SGMA water cuts have pushed weaker growers out; land is changing hands and marginal orchards are being pulled [20][21]. Some public specialty players are repositioning — Alico exited citrus to monetize land [12]; Limoneira is leaning into higher-margin avocados [10] — illustrating how single-crop exposure pressures companies to diversify or pivot. Well-capitalized owners with secure water are positioned to buy at lower land values (a judgment) [20].

9. Risks

• Water availability and cost — the existential risk; SGMA and drought can strand orchards and slash land values [25][31].
• Commodity price cycles — oversupply (notably almonds) can depress prices for years and force removals [21].
• Trade and tariff shocks — with 70%+ of nuts exported, retaliatory tariffs and origin substitution hit revenue hard [22][23].
• Labor — seasonal shortages, rising H-2A wages, housing mandates, and enforcement risk squeeze the largest cost line [5][30].
• Climate, disease, and pests — frost, heat, drought, wildfire smoke, hurricanes, and pathogens (e.g., citrus greening in Florida) threaten yields and permanent plantings [12].
• Perishability and customer concentration — harvested fruit must sell fast, and large retail/foodservice buyers can pressure price and terms.
• Capital intensity and illiquidity — high upfront cost, years to bearing, and land that sells slowly in a downturn make this an unforgiving asset for the undercapitalized; high interest rates raise debt service in weak years [20][21].
• Perennial rigidity — unlike row-crop farmers, orchard operators cannot quickly switch acreage when markets or water conditions change [2].

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Frame three distinct exposures. (1) Direct farm and land ownership; (2) produce sourcing, packing, and distribution; (3) branded or value-added food products. A company with large farm assets has better land-and-water protection but higher fixed costs; one reliant on independent growers is less asset-intensive but carries more supplier and quality risk; a diversified produce company offers stability but less pure exposure to 111336.

Public routes. No listed company is a pure 111336 play. For land-and-orchard exposure, farmland REITs Gladstone Land (LAND) and Farmland Partners (FPI) are the cleanest listed proxies — you own leased orchard/farm acreage and collect rent, with land appreciation on top [8][9]. For grower/operator exposure, Limoneira (LMNR), Mission Produce (AVO), Alico (ALCO), Fresh Del Monte (FDP), and Dole (DOLE) offer specialty or diversified produce plays — but each is concentrated (citrus, avocado, banana), not diversified fruit-and-nut. Reserve valuation, dividend, and yield analysis for these names to a security-level review: watch normalized earnings across crop cycles, free cash flow, net debt, segment margins, working capital, and the value of owned land and water rights. Compare EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) with caution — companies differ hugely in land ownership, leases, packing assets, and international mix.

Private routes. Direct ownership of orchard land — or a stake in an institutional farmland fund (Nuveen Natural Capital and peers) or a private grower — is how most capital actually enters this industry [16]. Underwrite land title and water rights first, then soil and irrigation infrastructure, tree/vine age, historical yield and packout, crop insurance, labor availability and housing, replanting needs, customer contracts, disease and weather exposure, debt service under weak-price scenarios, and an exit value grounded in both operating cash flow and land value.

Near-term outlook (forward-looking). The setup is a classic cyclical bottom: land values and almond prices have fallen sharply and acreage is being removed [20][21]. If removals tighten supply and export demand holds, growers with secure water and low cost structures are positioned to benefit as prices recover — but timing depends on the almond price cycle, tariff developments, and how aggressively SGMA cuts water. The durable long-run theme is that water security, not tree count, is the scarce asset: for private investors, land and water scarcity can provide an asset-value floor; for public investors, the cleaner opportunities are usually businesses that convert agricultural supply into reliable branded, packed, or distributed revenue. Demand for fruit and nuts is durable, but returns will hinge more on execution, crop mix, and supply discipline than on broad volume growth.

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau, "2022 NAICS Definition — 111336 Fruit and Tree Nut Combination Farming." https://www.census.gov/naics/?details=111336&input=111336&year=2022
2. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, "2022 Census of Agriculture Highlights: Fruit, Tree Nut, and Berry Production" (ACH22-15), August 2024. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2024/Census22_HL_FruitNutBerry.pdf
3. U.S. Small Business Administration, "Table of Size Standards," 2023. https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
4. USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, "Family-owned farms account for 95% of U.S. farms," August 2025. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/archive/2025/08-19-2025.php
5. USDA Economic Research Service, "Farm Labor," 2025. https://ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor
6. USDA Economic Research Service, "Peeling Open U.S. Fruit Consumption Trends," February 2025. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2025/february/peeling-open-us-fruit-consumption-trends
7. USDA Economic Research Service, "Pistachios crack walnuts' long-standing spot in California's tree nut acreage ranking," 2024. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=111236
8. Gladstone Land Corporation, Fourth Quarter and Year-Ended 2025 results and Form 10-K (portfolio of 144 farms / 98,688 acres / 14 states and ~55,532 acre-feet of California water), 2025–2026. https://www.gladstonefarms.com/investors/; https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1495240/000149524025000007/land_123124x8kxexhx991.htm
9. Farmland Partners Inc., "About Us" (portfolio acreage), 2026. https://farmlandpartners.com/about-us/
10. Limoneira Company, "Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Financial Results," December 2024, and Form 10-K (FY2025), SEC. https://investor.limoneira.com/news-releases/; https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001342423&type=10-K
11. Mission Produce, Inc., "Mission Produce Completes Acquisition of Calavo Growers," press release and Form 8-K, May 28, 2026 (~$430M cash-and-stock; Calavo shareholders received $26.05/share). https://investors.missionproduce.com/news-releases/news-release-details/mission-producer-completes-acquisition-calavo-growers-advancing
12. Citrus Industry Magazine, "Alico Citrus to Cease Operations After This Season," January 2025; Alico, Inc., "About." https://citrusindustry.net/2025/01/07/alico-citrus-cease-operations-after-this-season/; https://www.alicoinc.com/about
13. Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc., "Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results," February 2025. https://www.freshdelmonte.com/investor-relations/
14. Dole plc, company profile and Form 10-K (approx. 110,000 acres of owned/leased farmland worldwide), SEC. https://www.doleplc.com/about/at-a-glance/default.aspx
15. The Wonderful Company / Wonderful Pistachios & Almonds, "Who We Are / About Us," 2024. https://www.wonderful.com/who-we-are/
16. Nuveen Natural Capital (a TIAA company), farmland assets under management and California orchard exposure, 2024. https://www.nuveen.com/global/investment-capabilities/real-assets/farmland
17. Stemilt, "About Us." https://www.stemilt.com/about-us/
18. Driscoll's, "One Family, One Earth." https://www.driscolls.com/one-family-one-earth
19. Sunkist Growers, "Sunkist Celebrates 130 Years as a Grower-Owned Cooperative," 2023. https://sunkist.com/en-us/press-room/
20. National Land Realty, "Opportunities in the California Almond Tree Farm Market in 2024," 2024. https://nationalland.com/blog/opportunities-in-california-almond-tree-farm-market-in-2024/
21. Farm Progress, "California farmland values are plummeting — where's the bottom?" 2024. https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-business/calif-farmland-values-are-plummeting-where-s-the-bottom-
22. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources, "New tariffs could cost U.S. nut and fruit industries over $3 billion," 2025. https://ucanr.edu/blog/anr-news-releases/article/new-tariffs-could-cost-us-nut-and-fruit-industries-over-3-billion
23. FreshPlaza / West Coast Nut, "U.S. almond and pistachio industries impacted by retaliatory tariffs" (export shares and buyer markets), 2025. https://www.freshplaza.com/north-america/article/9710930/u-s-almond-and-pistachio-industries-impacted-by-retaliatory-tariffs/
24. California Department of Food and Agriculture, "2024–2025 California Agricultural Exports," 2025. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/
25. Public Policy Institute of California, "SGMA-Ready Crops as a Low-Water Alternative to Fallowing," 2024. https://www.ppic.org/publication/sgma-ready-crops-as-a-low-water-alternative-to-fallowing/
26. Organic Produce Network, "California water crisis forces record farm acreage fallowing," 2024. https://www.organicproducenetwork.com/organic-growers/california-farmers-face-water-challenges-amid-climate-change-and-regulations
27. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FSMA Final Rule on Produce Safety" (21 CFR Part 112). https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-produce-safety
28. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "FSMA Final Rule on Pre-Harvest Agricultural Water," 2024. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-pre-harvest-agricultural-water
29. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, "Pesticide Registration" (FIFRA), 2026. https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration
30. U.S. Department of Labor, "H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program." https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/foreign-labor/programs/h-2a
31. California Department of Water Resources, "SGMA Groundwater Management — Best Management Practices and Guidance." https://water.ca.gov/programs/groundwater-management/sgma-groundwater-management
32. Choices Magazine (Agricultural & Applied Economics Association), "Issues Facing the Californian Fruit Sector," 2023. https://www.choicesmagazine.org/choices-magazine/theme-articles/trends-and-challenges-in-fruit-and-tree-nut-sectors/issues-facing-the-californian-fruit-sector