Shrinking orchards have lifted prices, triggering a Valley-wide crisis of people who are no longer sure what to complain about.
FRESNO, California (Screw The News) – Central Valley almond growers have been granted their wish of a tighter supply and a higher price, and by every account they are taking it terribly. At a gathering of the Fresno-area Growers Anonymous Hotline, members admitted that after several years of complaining about too many almonds, they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having nothing to complain about, a situation one orchardist compared to winning the lottery and then being asked to pay taxes on the feeling.
The market picture, as sketched by RFD-TV’s tree nut outlook from the San Joaquin Valley, shows California almond acreage tightening after years of pressure, with trees pulled out and deficit-irrigated acres taken out of production. One producer told the network he was optimistic that prices would improve as supply shrank and demand strengthened. Pistachios, meanwhile, are moving from a big crop to a lighter “off year,” which the same producer described as a year in which prices stay decent. The word “decent” has been circulating through the Valley ever since, usually in a tone of deep suspicion.
The Numbers, Delivered Slowly
Detailed figures arrive via the Mid Valley Times’ report on navel prices and the almond rebound. The USDA forecast puts this year’s crop at 2.7 billion pounds, down 1 percent, while an acreage estimate says bearing orchards fell by 15,227 acres to 1,385,870, including 47,588 acres of removed trees. Almond prices dipped below $2 a pound last year, then rebounded to between $2.60 and $2.70 once actual yields came in lower. Navel oranges went the other way, with the weekly average falling to $13.75 from $20.25 the season before, after what California Citrus Mutual called an abundance of large sizes and “marketing challenges all season.”
Growers say the rebound feels less like a victory and more like being handed an enormous receipt. “In the old days, a bad year meant you were angry at the weather,” said Beatrix Hallgrimsson-Aguilar, who farms 300 acres outside Madera and chairs a support group for people who grow things for a living and then worry about it. “Now a good year means you’re angry at the weather for being nice to you and at the price for being nice to you, and you have to figure out which of those to be more suspicious of.”
Support Group Minutes
Minutes from the Tuesday hotline gathering, which were taken on the back of a seed catalog and later provided to reporters, include the following entries.
- One member reported that he had stood in a field for eleven minutes “waiting for the other shoe to drop,” and then realized he was holding the shoe.
- Another asked whether it was acceptable to feel relief about an off-year pistachio crop. The group voted that it was, but only privately and not in front of the pistachios.
- A third member disclosed that he had begun checking almond prices every four minutes, a habit he described as “like looking at your ex’s profile, except the ex has a futures contract.”
- A fourth shared that her grandfather had left her a tractor and a saying, and that the saying was “never trust a good year.” She added that the tractor does not start.
The Los Angeles Connection
Los Angeles shoppers, who sit at the far end of the almond supply chain and are rarely aware of it, are about to find out what a higher price means in a Silver Lake grocery aisle. A manager at a Westside natural foods store, who asked that his name not be used because his oat milk supplier reads the news, said the store is preparing to put a small sign in the nut section reading “Fresno is doing its best.” Customers, he said, tend to read such signs the way they read the terms and conditions on an app.
“I buy almond butter because a person on a podcast told me to,” said Priya Venkataraman-Cole, a stand-up comedian who lives in Los Feliz and does a bit about snack inflation. “Now I find out that a farmer had to take out 47,588 acres of trees so I could pay $14 for it. Every jar of almond butter in this city has a farm that wants to be paid and a roommate who eats half of it.”
Where the Rescue Money Goes
Growers are, as ever, divided on what outside help they actually need. At farm.fm, one headline asks whether governments would rather rescue farmers, an unfinished sentence that Valley growers say has been the unofficial motto of the industry since it began. Another story, on the global tally of world spending of 950 billion on farming while farmers check the mailbox, struck a chord at the support group, where several members confirmed they had personally checked the mailbox that morning and found a flyer about gutter cleaning.
The Valley’s response to the new price environment has so far been cautious. Growers have formed a committee to study the question of whether they are allowed to be happy, and a subcommittee to study whether the committee should be paid in almonds. Meanwhile, a quiet network of Valley humor writers has been logging the whole affair for readers at Bohiney, where it is already filed under “Weather, Emotional.”
When asked for a final comment at the close of the meeting, Hallgrimsson-Aguilar looked out across the parking lot, where a row of trucks idled in the late afternoon haze, and said only that the price of almonds was up, the price of oranges was down, and she was going to go home and wait for the next thing to go wrong, because in her experience it always arrives right on time and it never asks if you are ready.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/