“It’s gut-wrenching,” explained Almond farmer, Kelli Evans.
*****
Every year, it's something different with almonds. One year it's too dry, the next year it's too wet, then it's too cold, and it seems like every other year the blooms come early and then the spring winds knock them off.
I don't think, in all the years I lived in the San Joaquin Valley, that I ever saw a perfect year for almonds, yet they keep having these record breaking harvests.
"...early bloomer varieties..." Yeah, It's like the corn farmers, always trying to get the crop started earlier, and earlier in order to maximize the yield. Once in a while, they get bit in the ass. The old timers knew enough not to push their luck. (Of course they didn't have subsidies and crop insurance to cover their asses!)
ReplyDeleteImagine how hard it is to milk them.
ReplyDeleteYeap, same thing with olives here in Texas. Last winters freeze took out a bunch of orchards.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but with California almond growers, it's an every year thing.
DeleteMakes you wonder what the size of the harvest would be if everything fell into place.
DeleteOur son-in-law is a beekeeper. Two years ago he drove his bees from Michigan to a southern California orchard. The CA bees weren't doing their jobs in pollinating the almond orchards. Don't know how this works but he said the bees returned each night to their "home" in the truck. And did their surrogate pollinating by day. His main complaint was what to do with his days; believe he was there for over a month . .
ReplyDeleteAny excuse for a price hike.
ReplyDeleteHey. It's California. Hardly a week goes by without California declaring one "statewide emergency" after another.
ReplyDeleteFuggem.
Is that where Almond milk comes from? If so, they could all die on the vine... My wife and daughters keep bringing that shit home and it's gnarly!
ReplyDeleteAlmonds are very picky because they're unnatural to a degree. They're PEACHES, just a variety that has a tastier (and lower cyanide) kernel, and almost no flesh.
ReplyDeleteAnd that means zero thinning. With normal peaches, you get 50% pollination (or 50% killed by a freeze or whatever) and you still can get a bumper crop. But with almonds? 95% pollination means at most 95% of your crop. And if you need 80% of your crop to pay for expenses that year.... yeah, problems.
Not addressing WHY the farmers are always bitchin', but this is why they're able to do it so early in the season.
Thanks for that, didn't know too much about almonds. Here in Georgia we have pecans and peanuts. Plenty of peaches, too.
DeletePerhaps if they have a banner years harvest they could repay the Modesto Irrigation District utility rate payers who subsidize their irrigation water. The amount of welfare almond farmers in California receive is appalling.
Delete