Something unknown is happening in California : A punish drouth has been advert over the state these last five years . And yet , in the middle of it , water - guzzling sweet almond yield is skyrocketing — and has been every year of the drought . What ’s going on ? The answer lie in an agricultural crotchet .
Almonds havegotten a unfit tap recentlyas the thirsty plant in the farm cosmos . Though compact , spring up these ballock is incredibly weewee - intensive , with some people peg down the water cost at a gallon of water supply for a single nut . That ’s why this USDA chart on which crops are thriving during the drought is so intriguing .
While crop like hay and rice are take a dive , orchard crops , like Prunus amygdalus or grape , have been steadily rising .
But perhaps it ’s walnuts or grapevine or some other orchard harvest than Prunus amygdalus that are fuel the rise , you say ? Not so . In the last ten years , California ’s almond production in any of the drought years has beaten all the non - drought years — in some age by more than double . So how are they doing it ? I set out to find an answer — and did — hide late in the Prunus dulcis trees .
graphical record : NASS / USDA
An Agricultural Mystery
The reason for the rise is actually pretty simple , aver Ken Shackel , a professor of plant sciences at the University of California Davis and a member of the university ’s almond group . “ Yields are steadily choke up because the acres that were put in days ago went up , ” he told Gizmodo .
This makes sense . More landed estate devoted to almonds course means more overall almonds . But why would almond sodbuster be steadily devoting more acreage to an incredibly hungry harvest , right as the drought around them intensifies ?
Part of the reply can be regain in the price : Almond Leontyne Price are very mellow right now at over $ 3 a Egyptian pound , make them an appealing craw to have on a James Leonard Farmer ’s roster , even if they do require an additional H2O cost . But the much larger part of the response is not found in dollar , it ’s in the flora itself .
“ You have to recollect that almonds are planted one year , but do n’t really yield until three or four old age later on , ” Shackel enounce . “ In almond Tree , the first couple year you get just a little , but in five or six years you get much more . They top out at around year twelve . ”
The gravy of almonds that we ’re see today is not due to the most late planting — it ’s due to the years before , most of them pre - drought . A safe metre of how almonds are get along right now , noted Shackel , may be in count on out a take per acre measurement alternatively of the overall routine .
He was right-hand . The yield per Akko measurement did show a unlike — and much darker — picture .
The Great Almond Crash of 2025?
A dive intoNASS statsrevealed that while acreage devoted to Prunus dulcis has been steadily rising , yield per Akka rates for California peak at 2,500 pound per acre in 2010 , the last non - drought year California experience . Every twelvemonth since then , the charge per unit has fall . Today , an almond farmer is likely to tear 500 Ezra Pound of almonds less per Accho than six years ago .
If almond yield is ride richly off of the fumes of former water - robust years , then surely the next fair question is , how much longer can we require to coast ? Are we simply expect for the malleus to fall — and if so , when will that happen ?
It ’s not quite so uncomplicated as merely counting back from the last big planting . Almond farmers are potential to have orchards that they ’ve lay out at several unlike times , often split up by decades . And while almond yield per Akko does appear to be in free drop right now , today ’s number is still substantially higher than twenty twelvemonth ago , due to betterment in agricultural technical school .
While predicting exactly when a nightfall - off might happen is difficult , the overall trend — more land devoted to growing fewer and fewer Prunus dulcis — is pretty evident . Although we may not recognize when the drouth will finally come for California ’s sweet almond , the fact that it is coming remains clear .
Top image : Almonds / Amawasri Pakdara , Shutterstock ; midway image : Almond tree diagram in California / Christopher Boswell , Shutterstock ; Bottom image : Almond close up - up /PikiWikiIsrael
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