Drive down nearly any rural road in Fresno, Tulare, or Kings County and you’ll see rows of dead almond trees, dried-out vineyards, and forgotten orchards that nobody is farming and nobody is cleaning up. For years, neighboring growers have watched these properties become breeding grounds for navel orangeworm, Carpophilus beetles, rodents, and invasive weeds, all spilling onto their land and driving up their pest control costs.

Now, after years of frustration and a legislative near-miss in 2024, California has a new tool to address the problem. Assembly Bill 732, authored by Assemblymember Alexandra Macedo (R-Tulare) and signed by Governor Newsom, took effect January 1, 2026 and it is drawing renewed attention this week as ag commissioners across the state begin putting it to use.

The law gives county agricultural commissioners the authority to issue civil fines directly to landowners whose neglected properties have been declared a pest-related public nuisance. It’s a significant shift from the old system, which required counties to front removal costs themselves and then go through a lengthy lien process to try to recover the money, a burden most county budgets simply couldn’t absorb.

AB 732 – How The Fine Structure Works

• Step 1: County ag commissioner issues a public nuisance declaration and notifies the landowner.
• Within 30 days: Landowner must make a good-faith effort to address the pest problem or face a fine of $500 per acre.
• Within 45 days: If no action is taken, fines escalate to $1,000 per acre.
• County recourse: If the county must step in to remove crops, it may place a lien on the property to recover costs.
• Maximum nursery violation fine: Up to $2,500 per shipment for separate quarantine violations (separate from AB 732).

The problem that AB 732 targets isn’t new, but it has grown sharply in recent years. Falling commodity prices for winegrapes and tree nuts left a wave of Central Valley growers unable to afford either to keep farming their permanent crops or to pay the $3,000 to $4,000 per acre it costs to remove an almond orchard. Many simply walked away. The California Department of Food and Agriculture has estimated that Fresno County alone may have as many as 10,000 acres of unmanaged permanent crops and that figure doesn’t account for the full valley.

The consequences for active growers nearby have been real and measurable. Navel orangeworm, the most damaging pest in California almonds, overwinters in mummified nuts left on abandoned trees, and populations build up in unharvested orchards before migrating into neighboring productive land. Growers near abandoned acreage have reported spending significantly more on pest control and spray applications just to keep their crops protected.

“You’ve got people next door. We understand and are sensitive to it, but you’ve also got people next door.”

— Ryan Jacobsen, Fresno County Farm Bureau CEO

For years, county agricultural commissioners had the authority to declare these properties a nuisance, but the enforcement mechanism was almost toothless in practice. The process required going through the district attorney’s office, then placing a lien on the property after the county had already paid cleanup costs upfront, a system that Fresno County Agricultural Commissioner Melissa Cregan called “cost-prohibitive” during a state Assembly hearing. “Local governments simply do not have the funds to front these costs,” she told lawmakers.

AB 732 flips that dynamic. Commissioners can now issue fines directly, creating financial pressure on landowners without requiring the county to pay first. And critically, the law is designed to push compliance rather than punishment — commissioners are expected to work with landowners to develop a remediation plan before any fine is issued. “We don’t want to see farmland going out of production,” said Christopher Greer of the Tulare County Ag Commissioner’s Office. “The point of this is not to fine people, it is just a mechanism to make sure that people come into compliance.”

Still, not everyone affected by the abandoned orchard wave is a negligent absentee owner. Some farmers like Andres Avitua elaborated this past week that his citrus operation, once thriving and selling at local farmers markets, collapsed under the weight of dead crops, dead trees, and rising costs. For growers already on the financial edge, the prospect of additional fines is a painful reminder that the economics that drove abandonment haven’t been solved by the legislation itself.

Adding to the complexity is California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which is projected to force as much as a fifth of San Joaquin Valley farmland out of production over the next 15 years as groundwater pumping limits tighten. That means the pool of potentially abandoned acreage isn’t shrinking, it may be growing. Growers and commissioners alike are watching closely to see whether the fine structure in AB 732 is enough to move the needle, or whether additional support for landowners struggling to afford removal will be needed alongside it.

The law also pairs with Senate Bill 279, which took effect at the same time and expands the amount of agricultural material farmers can send to composting facilities, up to 5,000 cubic yards per year, a 500 percent increase from the previous limit. Because agricultural burning is no longer permitted in the San Joaquin Valley, composting had become one of the only legal disposal routes for pulled orchard material, but the old volume limits made it impractical for large operations. SB 279 was designed specifically to give landowners a more affordable path to cleaning up their properties and coming into compliance with AB 732.

For the Central Valley, this law isn’t abstract. Fresno County is widely considered the epicenter of the abandoned orchard problem, and Commissioner Cregan was one of the law’s most vocal advocates during the legislative process. As AB 732 moves from the books into active enforcement, growers and landowners here should expect commissioners to be tracking problem properties and to be ready to act. The tool is finally in hand. Now the question is how, and how quickly, it gets used.