Bringing to mind ageless adages about “putting all your eggs into one basket” and “everything that goes up must come down,” the current almond crisis for Valley agriculture has yet to penetrate the consciousness of most local residents, in part because of the major distraction of war in the Ukraine.
Discussion about bulging warehouses and falling prices has mostly been whispered. It’s difficult to talk while holding one’s breath. But more and more Valley farmers are finding themselves with their backs to the wall as a broken supply chain keeps last year’s almond crop marooned in warehouses while this year’s coming harvest has fewer and fewer places to go.
To get an idea of how much is at stake, consider that, “more than 1.1 billion pounds of almonds from last year’s harvest are sitting in warehouses,” almost all of them in the San Joaquin Valley. Theoretically, these almonds are sold, but the inability to deliver them has caused a crisis of plummeting prices and reduced demand for this year’s rapidly approaching harvest.
Already battered by a drought that increasingly appears to represent a new norm, Valley farmers now face the prospect of huge losses on their next crop. Though there will be a tendency to blame politics, the real culprit is a complex global web of competing markets that is easily broken by disruptions ranging from war to rising demand for consumer goods from China.
While free market fundamentalists tout the virtues of deceptively simple formulas about supply and demand, the power of the almighty dollar dictates that there’s now more money in shipping empty containers directly back to China than in filling them with precious Valley almonds. Not surprisingly, those with the most to lose are mounting increasingly desperate appeals for government help. There’s nothing like the looming prospect of bankruptcy to bring about a seismic change in a person’s economic religion.
In a perfect storm of monetary woes, Valley farmers are also looking at escalating costs of everything from fuel to fertilizer. No one needs a degree in economics to realize that when the costs of production are rising while the prices of your commodities are dropping, the likelihood of looking at the consequences from belly up becomes more and more certain.
If there’s a lesson here, it may be in a paraphrase of John Donne’s famous line that “No man is an island, entire unto itself.” The same can be said of an economy; we now live in a world of increasing economic interdependence. Economic islands are a thing of the past.
Valley farmers are the best in the world at what they do, but that world has become increasingly dependent on fair business practices, international law, and peace among nations. A single evil doer like Vladimir Putin can bring economic peril to the entire globe. Simple changes in the logistics of delivery can bring down an entire local economy.
Faced with the prospect of a graveyard of trees, Valley farmers are looking for help wherever they can. That help will arrive sooner when we realize we’re all in this together, dependent on shared values about truth, trust and justice. Communities, whether regional or global, have better chances for survival than warring tribes.
Farming was my first career after college. I focused on vegetable seed production in the northern Sacramento Valley above Colusa. I don’t feel sorry for the farmers cashing in on a golden egg with almonds, the farmers who are turning traditional crops into almonds and who are hurting the small farmers who created their farms with almonds as their main crop over the last decades. Successful farmers are diversified.
Diversity is very important, just look at wall street stuff. The lure of quick money seems to overtake common sense. Who do you know that eats just almonds?
Although a supply glut may exist, I have not noticed a drop in prices at retail outlets. I have not seen ads to eat more Almonds or an increase in roadside sales. Thus, this article has caught me totally by surprise.
Perhaps it is easier to get a government bailout than to make the extra effort to sell product domestically? Tax writeoffs are quite generous, too.
After the Valley Citizen articles on the many trees planted in the foothills in area totally dependent on groundwater, the life expectancy of those orchards may be shortened.
Thank you for an excellent lesson in economics naked of politics. The lesson applies equally well to other aspects of our society – we are interdependent on each other, success or misery depends on how well we cooperate. Just look at Ukraine as an example of a united nation that views itself as worthy of fighting for vs. the USA on January 6, 2021.
Speaking of a graveyard of trees, the high quality, tasty, and but abanded, neglected and left to dry out and be a fire hazard for the public to pay for Apricot orchards around the truck warehouses in Paterson, CA went up in smoke Sunday costing taxpayers thousands in fire department budgets and overtime.
Along with tons of air pollution, luckily we have the San Joaquin valley air pollution INFORMATION control district to greenwash events like this.
Adding to the heat of the fire could be the factory farms don’t pay normal rates on property tax , sales tax , farm labor wages, overtime pay and also get their buddyies in local government to not collect the fire department fees.
This factory farm waste fire could be seen 30 mile out from Los Banos
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11FxUd5bYK2tMwqNAow_bLTCAnHCcZmCK/view?usp=sharing,
view of fire
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PzqYVWHNXqT_8AICeqdEGH2EAINf4GIB/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WTdQ1jRY5QVUBG_HzIyHFs6lTBeJcFiG/view?usp=sharing,
effecting downtown Patterson , or why your kids get azma
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fGfILYH3BXlaYyQbJQcYZWnijwZpnQ1W/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1giOUvwM94g44PsK42i9sGpL9DiQER90C/view?usp=sharing,
whos waiting to get rich off this
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xrTHMNnpkI8CqNXSoLbVjVedWoSxJHwT/view?usp=sharing, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yCAFOhf6Ixrmhr5V5kZ_AjJ-RlB-df30/view?usp=sharing
With the huge acreage in the Valley devoted to nut trees (including a new orchard I saw today along East Hwy 132) it was only a matter of time before the market was glutted. Even in times of a strong global economy, you can only increase the supply so much before you face a sharp drop in prices due to a sated market. Add our current logistics problems to that and it is a recipe for economic disaster in the ag community. Now maybe some of those thirsty nut crops will be pulled before we run out of water for all the other things we need it for.
I myself kept thinking, as I read Eric Caine’s post and the 6 comments in reply, how much water was used to grow those almonds that are on hold, and the ones after those? Is it true that a single almond drinks what I heard quoted? Anyone know the stats?
I do not survive on almonds, I survive on vegetables, mostly greens. I am all for plenty of perennial, organically grown, heirlooms, when ever possible, as”diverse” a selection of vegetables, locally grown. Perennials, always, v. annuals, are good for me, best for the regeneration of soil; and regenerated soil holds more water, meaning less water use necessary, and more carbon capture to help the climate.
Perennial, regenerative farming, v. monoculture cropping is the ONLY WAY RECOMMENDED TO GROW THESE DAYS TO STOP DESTROYING TOP SOIL CONSERVE WATER, AND CEASE AND DESIST USE OF PESTICIDES AND TOXIC FERTILIZERS.