Southland Farms — Why California Avocados Are Worth Seeking Out
By Iryna Kolosvetova
The Fine Dining Journal
Five avocado varieties, a harvest season that stretches through most of the year, and fruit picked and packed the same day it ships. Inside Southland Farms in Fallbrook, California — and why we should be paying more attention to the avocados grown in our own backyard.
If you live in California, here's something worth checking the next time you pick up an avocado at the grocery store: where was it actually grown? There is a good chance the answer is Mexico or Peru.
There is nothing inherently wrong with eating an imported avocado. Imports make it possible for us to have them throughout the year. But during California avocado season, the habit becomes a little harder to understand. We live in one of America's major avocado-growing regions. Excellent fruit is being grown just a few hours (and sometimes considerably less) from our homes, while avocados that have traveled across international borders sit beside it in the produce aisle, often at a lower price.
Why? And does buying the California avocado actually make a difference?
Those questions led me to Southland Farms, a small family-run organic avocado farm in Fallbrook, California, where Joe and his family grow five different varieties — and where an online order can go from tree to shipping box in a single day.
From Packaging to an Avocado Grove
Joe didn't grow up professionally farming. For much of his adult life, he worked in the packaging industry through Southland Packaging, Inc. But growing things had been part of his life long before that. He planted his first garden when he was six and says he had always imagined eventually having a farm of his own.
Then, in 2022, an organic avocado grove in Fallbrook became available. He bought it.
"The stars were aligned and I jumped at the risk opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream," he says.
Southland Farms is still very much a small family operation. Joe runs the farm himself, works with one part-time grove manager and brings in additional workers during harvest. His 17-year-old son helps from time to time.
Since taking over the property, Joe has worked on regenerating the existing grove and expanding the varieties grown there. And that last part is particularly interesting, because there is much more to an avocado than most supermarkets would lead us to believe.
Wait — There Are Different Avocado Seasons?
Hundreds of avocado varieties exist. Southland Farms grows five of them. And they don't all arrive at the same time. The farm's approximate calendar looks like this:
Bacon — mid-November through December
Zutano — December through February
Hass — February through July
GEM — March through April
Reed — August through October
Weather can move those dates slightly, but together the varieties allow Southland Farms to harvest avocados through much of the year.
That alone changes the way we might think about buying them. We've become so accustomed to seeing avocados 365 days a year that it's easy to forget they are an agricultural product with seasons. When California's season ends, imports fill the gap. When the local season returns, however, there is an opportunity to switch back.
An avocado can take up to 15 months to develop from flowering to harvest, depending on its variety and the year's growing conditions. Knowing when to pick isn't simply a matter of looking at the fruit. Joe uses the historical season of each variety, the conditions of that particular year and maturity testing to determine when the crop is ready.
From the Tree to the Box — That Day
This may be the detail that makes farm-direct fruit easiest to understand.
When someone orders from FallbrookAvocado.com, Southland Farms says the avocados are picked and packed into the shipping box the same day. Not picked weeks in advance to sit in a distribution system. Not selected from warehouse inventory.
Picked. Packed. Shipped.
That doesn't mean the avocado arrives ready for guacamole that evening. Quite the opposite: farm-direct avocados may arrive firm and need time to ripen at home. But you're starting with freshly harvested fruit and allowing the ripening to happen in your own kitchen naturally.
So Why Are We Buying Avocados From Thousands of Miles Away?
This was one of the questions we particularly wanted Joe to answer. If we're growing avocados here, why can an avocado shipped from Mexico or Peru cost less than one grown in California?
His answer is surprisingly straightforward: labor, water and regulatory costs are substantially lower in Mexico and Peru. California growers operate under a very different cost structure. Water is particularly expensive in San Diego County, and labor is another major expense. Imported fruit can therefore arrive in the California market at a price local growers struggle to match.
And that creates a strange situation.
California consumers can live relatively close to avocado country and still routinely purchase avocados grown in another country because those avocados cost less at the supermarket.
During the months when California isn't producing enough fruit, imports serve an obvious purpose. But when California avocados are actually in season, buying imported fruit simply because we've stopped looking at the origin label feels like a missed opportunity.
The local avocado supports a California farm. It keeps more food production within the region. It gives us greater knowledge of where and how our food was grown. And in the case of farm-direct fruit like Southland Farms, it can mean an extraordinarily short journey from tree to customer.
Joe also points to freshness and overall quality as reasons he prefers California-grown fruit. The point isn't that every imported avocado is bad and every California avocado is perfect. It's much simpler: when excellent avocados are being harvested here, why wouldn't we eat ours first?
The Other Reason Local Matters
There is also a consequence to that purchasing decision that isn't visible in the produce aisle. According to Joe, San Diego County currently has around 12,500 acres of avocado farms, down substantially from its peak decades ago. In Fallbrook, he estimates that only 8–10 percent of the community's former groves remain.
The reasons aren't mysterious. Growing costs have increased, particularly water and labor, while imported avocados put pressure on the prices California growers receive for their fruit.
Southland Farms still sells about 70 percent of its crop to packing houses, where it enters the wholesale system. But the other 30 percent now goes directly to consumers.
Joe launched FallbrookAvocado.com because that direct relationship gives the farm a better margin than selling everything through packing houses. In practical terms, every direct box makes it easier to continue growing the trees.
That's a much more useful way to think about "supporting local." It isn't an abstract slogan. The economics of where we buy our food can determine whether growing that food locally remains worthwhile.
Does It Really Matter Whether An Avocado is Organic?
Here's another avocado question worth asking. Avocados have thick skins. We don't eat them. So does it really matter whether an avocado is organic?
Joe thinks we're looking at the question too narrowly.
At Southland Farms, he says they avoid conventional chemical fertilizers and chemical weed-control sprays. The farm instead emphasizes biodiversity, native flowers, canopy development and careful water management. Pruning, weed clearing and tending the trees involve considerable manual work. For Joe, the argument for organic farming isn't simply about whether something sprayed on the outside of an avocado reaches the flesh inside. It's about what happens around the avocado.
"The quality of the produce we consume starts with the health of the environment, soil, and water," he explains.
Organic agriculture affects the soil in which the tree grows, the water beneath it, the insects and animals around it and the microbial ecosystem of the farm. That makes the decision more nuanced. A shopper choosing an organic avocado isn't necessarily buying it because a conventional avocado is somehow unsafe to eat. They're also choosing how they would like the land producing their food to be managed.
Why Does Everyone Eat Hass?
Walk into almost any supermarket and avocado diversity effectively disappears. Usually, there's Hass. And there's a good reason for that.
Joe describes Hass as an excellent avocado in its own right: rich in oil and flavor, with the creamy texture people love. But it also happens to have something the modern food distribution system values enormously — a thick skin. It handles packing, transportation and distribution exceptionally well. That helped make Hass commercially dominant. But commercial practicality isn't the same thing as being the only avocado worth eating.
"All the other varieties deserve attention and are unique in their flavor profiles," Joe says. "You may find a specific variety that suits your palate best."
Southland Farms' five-variety calendar means Bacon gives way to Zutano, Hass overlaps with GEM, and then late summer brings something Joe particularly looks forward to: Reed.
Meet the Reed Avocado
If Joe could convince people to try one avocado beyond Hass, this would be it. The Reed avocado looks almost like a different fruit.
It is round rather than pear-shaped and can reach one to one-and-a-half pounds — roughly the size of a softball. Its thick green skin stays green, and inside is exceptionally rich, buttery flesh.
It's also a California original. The variety originated as a chance seedling discovered by James S. Reed in Carlsbad in 1948.
At Southland Farms, Reed season runs approximately August through October, making it the farm's late-summer avocado. For anyone accustomed to buying the same Hass avocado throughout the year, seeking out Reed — or Bacon, Zutano or GEM — offers another way to experience avocados: not as one standardized product, but as a seasonal ingredient with different varieties worth getting to know.
A California Avocado Is Worth Looking For
Southland Farms isn't asking consumers to stop eating avocados when California's season ends. Joe himself doesn't recommend a particular imported avocado — he prefers U.S.-grown fruit and points out that Florida is another American avocado-growing region — but imports clearly play a role in keeping avocados available when California production isn't in season.
What this farm does make us question is our habit of treating origin as irrelevant. We check whether strawberries are local. We wait for California tomatoes. We get excited about local citrus season and know that a peach picked nearby in summer is different from one that has traveled halfway around the world.
Avocados deserve the same attention.
California grows them. Fallbrook has been growing them for generations. There are multiple varieties, each with its own season, and there are small farms where the fruit can be picked and packed the very day we order it.
So during California avocado season, turn over the sticker. Check the sign. Ask where the avocado came from. The California one may cost a little more. Now we know why. And it may be worth choosing it.
Visit Southland Farms
Southland Farms' avocados are available directly through FallbrookAvocado.com, with varieties changing throughout the season. The farm also offers a limited number of visits by arrangement; interested visitors can contact the farm directly for availability.
Photography courtesy of Southland Farms.
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