For the first time in decades, poultry emerged as Marin County’s most valuable agricultural commodity last year, edging out organic milk production, which was battered by three years of drought. Organic milk production decreased by 25 percent, dragging down the total gross value of the county’s agricultural production to $85.3 million in 2023, a decline of 9 percent, according to the latest Marin County crop and livestock report. The gross value of Marin’s poultry rose 5 percent to $24.6 million, while the value of organic milk fell by 32 percent to $22.9 million. Cattle was the third most valuable commodity, with a value of $14.8 million. The value of poultry rose in significant part due to the bird flu epidemic that ravaged much of the nation last year but spared Marin. The egg shortage elsewhere pushed up the value of eggs here. Over the last decade or so, many Marin farmers and ranchers have diversified their operations by producing eggs from pasture-raised chickens. Meanwhile, the number of dairies in the county has plummeted from around 400 at its peak to just 17 today. “We have crop reports online going back to 1935,” said Joe Deviney, the commissioner of the county’s Department of Agriculture and Weights and Measures. “I looked at the numbers, and it’s very close, but poultry did come up ahead as number one for the first time in all the records that I could see.” Three straight years of drought forced the remaining dairies to reduce their herds, as the price of organic forage skyrocketed and inflation drove up operating costs. Meanwhile, larger-scale organic milk producers elsewhere have emerged as competitors to Marin’s small dairies. “There’s more organic milk on the market,” said David Lewis, director of the U.C. Cooperative Extension Marin. “It’s simply supply and demand that controls price.” Adding to the struggles, the supply of imported organic grains for feed was constricted due to the war in Ukraine, considered Europe’s breadbasket and one of the world’s leading grain producers. Meanwhile, the United States Department of Agriculture decertified India’s organic program. “In 2022 and 2023 there was a convergence of unprecedented hardships for organic dairy farms in California, including Marin County,” said Joseph Button, a vice president at Straus Family Creamery, which sources milk from six organic dairy farms in Marin. Two of those dairies are in the Point Reyes National Seashore, where drought and ongoing litigation from environmental groups have prompted dairying families to reduce their herds, Mr. Button said. “The impact of these herd decreases paired with the dairy feed cost crisis were the major causes of the significant reduction in Marin County’s milk supply in 2023,” he said. Feed costs have been slowly falling this year, resulting in a brighter outlook for most organic dairy farms. But for the last three years, times have been tough. “They’ve been getting squeezed,” Mr. Lewis said. “The individual dairy producer has been in a really tough place because of the drought, because of inflation, and the cost of feed.” Mr. Lewis said he took heart in the resiliency demonstrated by the strong showing of the poultry sector. “While dairy has slipped, there are signs of diversification that are a silver lining in the crop report,” he said. “That shows we’ve built some resiliency into the local economy.”