A deepening drought threatens one of California’s most profitable crops - almonds. One farmer has left a third of his farmland unplanted to save water for the nuts. More growers are expected to abandon their orchards as water becomes scarce and expensive.
Employees inspect almonds in the processing facility at Steward & Jasper Orchards in Newman, Calif. on July 20, 2021. California's deepening drought threatens its $6 billion almond industry, which produces about 80 percent of the world's almonds. As water becomes scarce and expensive, some growers have stopped irrigating their orchards and plan to tear them out years earlier than planned.
“We may have to sacrifice one of them at the end of the year if we feel that we don’t have enough water next year,” said Del Bosque, who also grows melons, cherries and asparagus. “That means that our huge investment that we put in these trees is gone.” California almond production grew from 370 million pounds in 1995 to a record 3.1 billion pounds in 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During that period, land planted with almond trees grew from 756 square miles to 2,500 square miles .
Almonds are California’s top agricultural export. The industry ships about 70% of its almonds overseas, fueled by strong demand in India, East Asia and Europe, according to the board.As almond prices rose during a previous drought that California declared from 2012 to 2016, farmers and investors planted hundreds of square miles of new orchards in areas that lack reliable water supplies.
Inside the processing facility of Stewart & Jasper Orchards, about a dozen women wearing hair nets and masks inspected almonds by hand as a river of nuts traveled over conveyer belts before they were packed into boxes and shipped to customers around the world. Jasper estimates that about a third of California’s orchards are planted in areas with unreliable water supplies, and many of them won’t survive the drought. Some of his neighbors have stopped irrigating their orchards, and they’re letting the trees die.
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