A nursery survey reporting at
least 14.5 million new almond trees have been planted since June 2015 shows the
continued vibrancy of the industry, experts say.
Based on an average of 135 trees
per acre, the new purchases equate to 108,000 acres of almonds planted,
according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
A little more than 71 percent of
the trees sold — or 77,000 acres — are new almond orchards while the rest were
used to replace existing trees or orchards that were taken out, the agency
explains.
The estimate is consistent with
an April acreage report that found there are 220,000 non-bearing acres of
almonds waiting to come on line, said Richard Waycott, president and chief
executive officer of the Almond Board of California.
“Those trees are between 1 and 3
years of age,” said Waycott, noting that if one-third of them are new, that
would be close to 77,000 acres. “It’s in keeping with where we are in terms of
new orchard expansion.”
The growth continues as prices
have fallen by nearly half in the past year from the more than $4 a pound that
was paid for some almonds during the 2014 crop year. The reduced prices and
development of new products using almonds revived demand, leading to record
shipments this summer, industry officials said.
“It’s still a good investment,”
University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor Roger Duncan said
of almonds. “It still makes sense. Farmers are still making money. It’s still
profitable. If you’re a farmer and you own land, you have to farm something,
and you look at all your options.”
Several factors have fed the
continued growth in acreage even amid lower prices, experts said. For one
thing, some of the trees may have been ordered from nurseries while prices were
still booming, as there was a waiting list of a year or two for some varieties.
Moreover, the lower prices were
an incentive for growers to replace older orchards that had lost productivity,
Duncan said.
“An almond orchard’s lifespan is
somewhere around 25 years,” he said. “A lot of orchards have been artificially
... kept on life support. In previous times they would have been removed, but
because prices were so high, even the fairly poorly producing orchards were
making money.”
Satellite imagery used by the
Almond Board has found that 96 percent of new almond orchards have gone into
existing irrigated land, replacing other crops, Waycott said. Only 4 percent
went onto grazing land or other land that wasn’t irrigated, he said.
“I think it’s just a shift going
on between what (crops) are more profitable as foreseen by growers and more
essential in the California environment than certain crops that can be grown
elsewhere,” Waycott said.
In anticipation of a 25 percent
increase in production over the next three years as the new trees come on line,
the Almond Board is seeking the USDA’s permission to raise its grower
assessment from 3 cents to 4 cents per pound, which would increase its income
from about $60 million to $80 million annually, Waycott said.
The board is boosting its
marketing efforts, reigniting a program in Japan, targeting men in Canada and
increasing funding for an advertising campaign in Europe, he said. In January,
the board will begin assessing the Mexican market for opportunities to promote
almonds, he said.
“Across many of our existing and
some new programs, we’re upping our game” to make sure demand keeps up with
supply, he said.
Source: http://www.capitalpress.com
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét