A new analysis by Gourmet Gift Baskets finds that many of America’s most popular fruits, vegetables, and nuts are highly concentrated in a handful of at-risk growing regions, leaving them increasingly vulnerable to climate-driven disruption.
U.S. agriculture is highly specialized. While commodity crops like corn and soybeans are grown in more than 75% of all counties, specialty crops depend on narrow combinations of temperature, water, and soil conditions to thrive, confining their production to a small number of ecoregions. While this hyper-specialization enables local varieties like Washington caneberries, Idaho mint, and Florida winter strawberries, it has also created a fragile supply chain. Many of the microclimates best suited for specialty crop production are becoming increasingly exposed to drought, extreme heat, flooding, wildfire, and water stress, threatening the stability of the national supply chain and putting the availability of some of the country’s favorite grocery staples at risk.
Key Takeaways
- Honeydew melons have the highest risk profile, with 86.8% of cropland located in tracts classified as "very high” risk by FEMA.
- Other ultra-high-risk crops include tomatoes (68.6% of cropland in very high risk tracts), pistachios (65.4%), and pomegranates (63.9%).
- Crop acreage for oranges declined by 1 million acres from 2010 to 2025, the largest decline of any fruit.
- Other specialty crops losing ground include sunflower (-80,000 acres), lettuce (-20,000 acres), and strawberries (-17,000 acres).
- The most concentrated crops are also the most exposed to natural hazards, particularly along the Southwest and West Coasts.
- Celery is the most geographically concentrated specialty crop in the country.
Specialty Crops in the Climate Risk Crosshairs
Historically, counties in the West, the Southeast, and along the Gulf Coast have faced greater exposure to drought, heat, wildfires, flooding, and severe storms. A map of FEMA’s National Risk Index layer shows a troubling overlap between the farms driving specialty crop production and the regions facing the country's most significant climate hazards.
The same factors that make certain regions ideal for specialty crops can also make them vulnerable. California's Central Valley's long growing season and fertile soils make it a powerhouse for nuts, grapes, citrus, and tomatoes, but that productivity depends heavily on water availability in a region highly exposed to drought, extreme heat, and long-term water stress.
Arizona's irrigated desert regions can produce winter vegetables when much of the country is frozen, giving crops like lettuce, celery, and melons access to warm-season growing windows. But those same regions face extreme heat and mounting pressure on limited water supplies.
Florida’s warm, humid climate supports winter strawberries and citrus, but the state is broadly exposed to hurricanes, flooding, and long-term shifts in growing conditions.
By overlaying crop distribution with FEMA’s National Risk Index, Gourmet Gift Baskets found several essential crops facing extreme exposure to natural hazards.
The crops with the highest risk concentration tend to share two traits: narrow growing requirements and a dependence on regions where heat, water, and season length already sit near their biological limits.
Honeydew melons have the highest exposure profile in the analysis, with 86.8% of acreage in census tracts classified as very high risk by FEMA. Tomatoes follow closely at 68.6%. Pistachios have 65.4% of their cropland in very high-risk tracts, the highest share of any tree nut. Garlic faces the highest exposure of any vegetable, with 62.1% of acreage in very high-risk tracts.
These crops are exposed for different reasons. Melons, tomatoes, and garlic depend heavily on warm, dry regions where long, frost-free seasons support high yields but also increase irrigation demand and heat stress. Tree nuts like pistachios, almonds, and walnuts are rooted in long-lived orchard systems, making sudden relocation virtually impossible compared to annual field crops.
In general, California’s Central Valley has the greatest risk profile of any major agricultural center. Other agricultural centers with high-risk profiles include the lower Colorado River Basin, South Florida, and the Rio Grande Valley, where high-value specialty crops such as lettuce, strawberries, citrus, and melons face elevated exposure to extreme heat, water scarcity, and storm-related hazards.
The Great Migration: Crops Are Already Changing
Unlike commodity crops, specialty crops have limited geographic flexibility. As climate patterns shift, specialty crops are forced to adapt in place, relocate, or contract altogether.
Some crop footprints are already shrinking dramatically. From 2010 to 2025, U.S. orange cropland fell by nearly 1 million acres, the largest decline of any fruit crop in the analysis. As Florida orange production collapsed, the geographic center of American citrus acreage shifted 1,763 miles northwest into California and Arizona. The geographic center of broccoli underwent a similar migration, shifting 1,380 miles southwest from the Northeast to California and Arizona.
Meanwhile, durable commodity crops are aggressively expanding. Corn, which can tolerate wide temperature swings and varied soil types, increased in cropland by 10.2 million acres from 2010 to 2025, more than any other food crop.
The contrast is revealing. Broad-acre commodity crops can often expand across a wider range of environments, while many specialty crops have fewer places to go when disease, water stress, heat, or storms disrupt their historic production centers.
As suitable environments for specialty crops contracted over the last 15 years, crops like celery, greens, cauliflower, and mustard saw some of the largest increases in geographic concentration, packing themselves even tighter into viable ecoregions. Crops like olives, pears, and eggplants are concentrated further into high-risk tracts, increasing the risk of climate hazards and supply chain disruptions.
The migration is not always a simple march north. Some crops are shifting toward regions with established irrigation systems, processing infrastructure, farm labor networks, and market access. Others are shrinking into smaller but more productive production zones. In both cases, the result is a more concentrated map of American specialty agriculture.
Why Crop Specialization Matters
The strict agronomic requirements of specialty crops result in extreme geographic clustering. Nearly 90% of U.S. celery acreage is concentrated in just two counties in California and Arizona, while Yakima County, Washington, accounts for nearly 60% of U.S. hops cropland. Whatcom County, Washington, is home to more than half of the U.S. caneberry acreage, and Umatilla County, Oregon, is home to 36% of all gourd cropland. Helping supply the nation during winter when California berry production dips, Hillsborough County, Florida, accounts for roughly 43% of U.S. strawberry acreage.
Some gift basket favorites are similarly bottlenecked. Cranberry production is heavily concentrated in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, while mint production is concentrated in small pockets in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Indiana. Across the analysis, the most geographically specialized crops include celery, cauliflower, hops, cranberries, and lettuce.
This specialization has helped optimize specialty crop production in terms of yield, seasonality, and efficiency. But as extreme weather events intensify, the lack of geographic mobility for these crops can turn an economic advantage into a national vulnerability. For consumers, that vulnerability is often invisible until it shows up in grocery prices or availability. A winter freeze, drought, hurricane, heat wave, wildfire, or disease outbreak can have national consequences when production is concentrated in only a few counties.
Relocation is especially difficult for long-lived crops. Pistachios, almonds, and walnuts are not annual crops that can be shifted quickly from one region to another. Orchards require years of investment before they reach commercial production, tying growers to specific places for decades. Annual crops have more flexibility, but even they are constrained by irrigation systems, labor availability, transportation networks, processing facilities, and market relationships.
What to Watch
Specialty crop adaptation will not look the same everywhere. As growing seasons lengthen, some crops may expand into northern states. Others may need to lean heavily on controlled-environment agriculture. Some high-risk regions may shift away from specialty fruits entirely.
For consumers, this hyper-specialization will likely result in increased volatility in the price, supply, and origin of everyday favorites. For growers, the challenge will be to preserve the efficiency of specialization while reducing dependence on high-risk regions.
To secure the future of our favorite foods, American agriculture may need to stop putting all its crops in one basket.
Go Deeper
Want to see where your favorite produce is grown? Check out our comprehensive interactive map to explore the hyper-specialized geography of U.S. agriculture.
Methodology
To determine natural hazard risk for specialty crops, Gourmet Gift Baskets reviewed data from the USDA Cropland Data Layer and FEMA’s National Risk Index. Cropland data from the 30-meter 2025 CDL raster was aggregated to the county level using zonal statistics to estimate acreage by crop, and county-level shares were used to measure geographic concentration via the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. FEMA’s 2025 NRI scores were used to classify census tracts by overall exposure to hazards such as drought, extreme heat, wildfire, and flooding. Crop acreage was mapped to these risk categories to calculate the share of each crop grown in very high-risk areas. Changes in geographic concentration between 2010 and 2025 were calculated by comparing county-level acreage distributions across CDL years. Crops were then ranked by their degree of geographic concentration and the percentage of acreage in high-risk counties.