Alfalfa acreage in the Antelope Valley has fallen from a mid-20th-century peak of 50,000 to 70,000 acres to under 10,000 acres today, and Lancaster is what's left of that farm belt. The decline tracks 2015 groundwater-pumping limits and rising labor costs, and it has hollowed out the food processing and packaging equipment demand the valley once supported. What's left is concentrated but real. The last operating dairy farm in the Antelope Valley, and in Los Angeles County, still farms roughly 4,000 acres of alfalfa here to feed its herd, and a local operation continues processing onions at a facility on 70th Street East, one of the last operations of its kind left in the valley.

That's a narrow base to build on, and we won't pretend otherwise: agricultural processing in the Antelope Valley is smaller than it was a generation ago, and shrinking further as groundwater rules and farm-labor costs bite. But the operations still running here need real packaging equipment. An onion-processing line benefits from EcoBagger or RotoBagger premade-pouch machines and automatic case packers built for fresh produce, while a dairy operation of this remaining scale looks toward EliteFill auger fillers and checkweighers suited to smaller production runs. You know your dairy or onion line inside out; PLAN IT supplies equipment built for the scale the Antelope Valley still runs, including Mars Series VFFS baggers and case-packing systems sized to fit a line this size, from a lean crew to a bigger one. Browse our food and beverage packaging solutions or our full range of solutions to see what fits a dairy or onion line at this scale.