Before anyone said a dollar amount, the appraiser had split the orchard's value in two
Worth noting a distinction ag lenders often draw that generalizes well beyond citrus. An appraiser will typically separate two numbers on income producing land: the bare land value, what the dirt is worth with water access stripped of anything growing on it, and the value of what is planted, based on age, variety, and remaining years of production. The loan size usually keys off the land value, since that is what a lender is left holding if everything goes wrong. Crops or trees can die, a freeze can take a season, prices can move against a borrower. The production value and history, separately, is how a lender judges whether the borrower can actually service the debt in the meantime. Two different numbers doing two different jobs, rather than one appraised value multiplied through. The exact mechanics vary by lender and are worth confirming in writing, but that underlying logic is fairly standard in ag and orchard lending.
