Dickinson Family Farms: A SoCal Food Hub on the Rise

Though today it represents a grower base comprising well over 2,000 acres, Dickinson Family Farms, a diversified organic fruit hub based in Fallbrook, California, got its start on just a few acres more than 30 years ago. 

“My wife and I bought four and a half acres from her grandfather in 1988 and started our first farming there,” says Jeff Dickinson, CEO of Dickinson Family Farms. “My father-in-law was a farmer, and he basically took me under his wing and showed me how to farm. And so I worked on his avocado groves as well as the one that we owned.” 

Jeff Dickinson, CEO, Dickinson Family Farms

In 1991, Dickinson and his wife moved onto the orchard property, where they’d built a home for themselves. He worked a full-time job in manufacturing and over time bought more avocado acreage and also started managing some other growers’ groves.  

He decided to start growing organically in 2000 after his daughter was born with a heart condition, and he was worried about how the chemicals sprayed in his orchards might negatively impact her fragile state. 

“We were really concerned about the pesticides and whatnot going into the air—because at that time heli-spraying was the way that we got insecticide spray all over the groves because the trees were so tall,” says Dickinson. “And of course the overspray went everywhere. And so we just didn't want to deal with that.” 

To start combating pests organically, Dickinson released a bunch of green lacewings and ladybugs on the property, which he says have had no trouble thriving. He also began keeping beehives in his orchards. 

“It's been a positive experience all the way through,” he says of making the switch to organic growing. “And in fact, we went from having to spray like everybody else for bugs to I haven't sprayed an insecticide in our grove since I released the lacewings and ladybugs—because the beneficial population has more than taken over. And even when other groves in the area are spraying for thrips or whatever, or mites, we don't have any problems. So the system really works. Let the natural beneficials and ecosystem take hold—it really does make a difference.” 

Dickinson says his farm first achieved organic certification in the late 2000s. In 2010, he bought his neighbor’s 15-acre avocado orchard, which he also converted to organic. Around that time, he was still working in manufacturing. He’d sold the manufacturing company he co-owned and had continued to work for it under the new ownership for a number of years. 

"We went from having to spray like everybody else for bugs to I haven't sprayed an insecticide in our grove since I released the lacewings and ladybugs—because the beneficial population has more than taken over." - Jeff Dickinson

Eventually, he felt it was time to move on, so he left his position and took some time off to ponder his next move. “I didn't do anything for about six months,” he says. “I read and prayed and read my Bible and tried to seek counsel from other people, trying to figure out what do I want to do? And I just didn't know. And then a buddy of mine was a grove manager, and he was looking to exit the business and asked if I could take over some of his groves.” 

Since Dickinson was already managing a handful of groves, he agreed. “I went down that path and loved it,” he says. “It was great being outside and being active.” 

“And then COVID hit,” he recalls. “And my oldest son Andrew was a sales manager for an outdoors company. And he, along with everybody else, got laid off, and he's like, ‘We could work together.’ And by then I already had the sales going. So he just stepped into it and then started expanding it. And he's a much better salesman than I am—so he really opened that up.” 

At that point, in 2020, Dickinson Family Farms began recruiting partner growers to help meet increasing customer demand, and the company built its own on-site warehouse and cooler that fall. Some local packinghouses had closed down in recent years, so Dickinson says there were a number of growers looking for places to sell their fruit. 

Today, Dickinson Family Farms works with about 40–50 organic growers ranging in size from 2 to 500 acres, and most of them are within a 50-mile radius of Fallbrook. The company offers more than 30 varieties of organic fruit, including avocados, many types of citrus (lemons, limes, navels, satsumas, tangelos, pixies, grapefruit, pomelos, and more), apples, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, dragon fruit, cherimoyas, and macadamia nuts. 

Dickinson Family Farms’ customer base includes retailers like Jimbo’s and Bristol Farms and distributors such as Charlie’s and Melissa’s. A large (and growing) part of its sales are to local school districts in San Diego County via CDFA’s Farm to School Program. And just last year, the company started offering fruit for direct-to-consumer sales on its website. 

In 2020, Dickinson Family Farms began recruiting partner growers to help meet increasing customer demand, and the company built its own on-site warehouse and cooler that fall.

“A lot of the farmers that we work with, if we hadn't come along, they would've just dried up their trees,” Dickinson says. “Because their option beyond us was to pay some guy to come through there with a pickup truck, pay them 20, 30 cents on the dollar for their stuff, pick it, and sell it up in the LA market for cash. And you can't support a farm on that. But that was their option. Or they let it drop. And we saw that a lot of people were just letting their fruit drop because they had nowhere to go with it. There used to be other packinghouses that did what we do, but many of them have gone out of business. And so there's really not very many people doing what we do with a variety of crops.” 

In addition to supporting a vibrant local organic farming community, one of the things Dickinson is most proud of is his company’s zero waste effort. “We try to have a buyer or a purpose for every piece of fruit that comes in here, whether it's smashed into little pieces or whether it's beautiful,” he says. “So we have the primary markets; we have secondary markets; we have juice markets for citrus. And then the very last thing we have after animal feed is a compost pile. So we try not to throw anything away. Everything has a purpose and gets used.”