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Hi Barnacles, sorry about the delayed response. I think that...

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    Hi Barnacles, sorry about the delayed response.

    I think that question you ask regarding the impact of dry weather on almond yields is a good one.

    Interestingly, it would seem that seven of those eight years that you mentioned have one factor in common: all saw below average annual precipitation. So dry years in California seem to often lead to strong almond crops.

    For some reason, both on this thread and sometimes in analyst research on this company, you often find that there is a great deal of angst about the potential impact of periods of below-average rainfall on this company.

    But the precipitation and almond yield data from California would seem to suggest that years with below average rainfall might present more reason for optimism than pessimism. Bumper almond crops are more likely to occur in dry years, than in wet years.

    Needless to say, extended dry periods are not good news for almond growers, although as they are a high-value crop growers of almonds have more staying power than growers of other crops, and so droughts can present a good opportunity for cashed-up almond growers to expand.

    I haven't seen any years in which heavy rainfall between mid Feb and mid March resulted in a strong crop, with the possible exception of 2011. But I think 2011 was a bit of an anomaly, as in the mid-2000s a vast number of high-density almond orchards were planted in California, and these trees were approaching maturity in 2011, so it provided a bit of an artificial boost to the yields and crop size that year.

    Regarding the current situation in California, there was one interesting news item on the Agfax website last week that I thought was worth a mention.

    Last week saw some very strong winds across the central and southern Californian almond growing regions, knocking nuts off trees and also blowing trees over in places.

    This isn't all that unusual: this type of weather seems to occurs every other year. However, based on the comments of one farm advisor, these strong winds may have had a significant impact on almond orchards in one almond growing area, the southern county of Kern:

    “We got some wind this week and it was bad. I fought it all day Monday but didn’t immediately see real damage and didn’t notice a lot of nuts on the ground. But today (4/12) in the Delano area I saw where the wind took down a big number of trees.“I also saw at least some good-sized nuts on the ground that would definitely be considered crop, although I did not see a lot of those overall.

    The nuts are actually sticking pretty good. Where a moderate level of nuts were on the ground, it was predominately what we’d expect with the June drop, so they were going to come off anyway. Again, I expected more, considering the amount of wind.

    “The real damage was the wind-fall trees. The ground was being irrigated where most of the damage occurred, but whole roots didn’t come up. With a number of those trees I examined, it looked like it busted off as if disease had been a factor.

    The consensus opinion seems to be that the loss of nuts isn't a big deal, as most of these nuts would have fallen off anyway. But it sounds like the loss of these trees in Kern could cause growers in the south some headaches.

    Earlier this week, there was rain across most of the Californian growing area. For the most part, the precipitation was light, however some areas of Merced and Stanislaus counties saw about 15 mm over a couple of days.

    The reason I mention this is that today and tomorrow, temperatures in the Central Valley are expect to hit 30 degrees or more.

    Moisture and warm temperatures are not a good combination, and so this could make almond growers in California a little nervous, and may be something to keep an eye on.

 
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