[7] It covered the entire range of subjects that affect agriculture, from plant and livestock breeding, integrated pest management and organic farming to water rights, urban expansion, and migrant workers.

[9][10] Given the large scale of agriculture in California (a $42 billion industry as of 2012)[11] and the long history of tensions between small farmers, agribusiness, and urbanites, its stories occasionally stirred controversy both within and outside its own readership.

[7] It wrote about the harm done by the financial crisis to small farmers, and it ran a cover story on marijuana, already by then the state's unofficial number one cash crop (though not officially recognized as such until some years later).

In the fall of 1988, the magazine published "The Big Fix"[13] in which journalist and historian Richard Steven Street reported that some table grape growers were illegally using a growth-enhancing chemical known as 4-CPA on their vines, alongside an "unusually critical" editorial opposing the practice.

by urban planner Rudy Platzek drew wide attention to the possibility that by the end of the 21st century the Central Valley might not even be able to feed its own rapidly expanding population (due to loss of acreage to new development), let alone the rest of the country.

Headquartered in San Francisco for most of its existence, the magazine went through a number of owners in its final decades, including Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (which acquired it in 1988) and Penton Media, California Farmer's publisher at the time of its demise.