Butte County 2017 crop value up after several years of declines

Harvest is underway for what’s expected to be a record almond crop statewide at 2.45 billion pounds.

The only question is, who’s going to buy it?

Almonds have gotten entangled in President Donald Trump’s trade wars, with three of the major overseas markets for the California nuts placing stiff tariffs on their import.

China, for instance, has placed a 50 percent tariff on almonds. That means for every $100 worth of almonds exported to China, someone has to pay the Chinese government $50 before the nuts can be unloaded off the ship.

Who that someone making the payment is, makes everything uncertain. The importer could make the whole payment if he thought his customers would pay a buck-and-a-half for what had been a dollar’s worth of nuts. Or the exporter could eat the whole cost, or the loss could be split.

But what’s just as likely is that the deal just won’t get made.

“What marketers are seeing is people backing away from the new crop,” said Butte County Farm Bureau Executive Director Colleen Cecil. “Last year’s crop is already sold but this crop we’re worried about. They’re going to find a cheaper product and once they do that we’ve lost that market.”

It’s a big deal because more than half the almond crop is exported. The Almond Board reported that in 2016-17, the harvest was 2.1 billion pounds, with 1.4 billion pounds exported.

Statewide, the value A farm worker drives a truck that sprays and fans out herbicide as it makes its rounds on the almond tree farm on Jake Wenger’s family nut farming operation in 2015 in Modesto.

of the crop was $5.1 billion, according to the Almond Board. A UC Davis report released in early August said $1 billion of that was exported to countries that raised their tariffs as the trade war escalated – China, India and Turkey.

That whole market could vanish, but the UC Davis report indicates that if the almonds were diverted to other markets, the resulting price drop, estimated at 18 percent, would result in an even bigger loss: $1.6 billion.

In Butte County, the value of the 2016 harvest was $188 million, according to the annual crop report. An 18 percent drop would amount to a nearly $34 million hit to the local economy. The hit in Glenn County would be larger – $40 million – as the crop there was valued at $224 million.

Prices were already down from a high of $4 a pound in 2014 to $2.53 a pound in 2017, according to the Almond Board.

Butte County Ag Commissioner Louie Mendoza said he hasn’t heard of price drops locally from the range of $2.50 a pound. “At $2.50, most growers would probably be OK,” he said.

Cecil of the Farm Bureau said growers were getting hammered coming and going,

as U.S. tariffs on imports from abroad were raising costs for machinery and other things needed to raise crops.

“We’re hoping for a resolution. We get why it’s happening, but we’re concerned.”

Last week U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced applications were being taken for programs to offset the impact of the trade war on farmers.

The biggest share of the relief will be direct aid to corn, cotton, dairy, hog, sorghum, soybean and wheat producers.

There’s also a program to buy and distribute up to $1.2 billion in crops not included in the aid payments. The list includes $34.6 million for walnuts and $48.1 million for rice

There was not yet an allocation for almonds.

Mendoza said the local harvest is about half over and that it’s going pretty well. The prized nonpareil variety nuts are pretty

much all in, and they represent nearly half of the local crop.

Some cooler weather at the end of August slowed the drying of the nuts. That delayed them from going to the hullers, he said, but conditions have turned around.

On average the crop is down about 15 percent he said, due to the freeze during the February bloom. Some growers were hit harder and others not as much. “It varies from orchard to orchard.”

There were concerns at the time that more of the crop would be lost, even up to the 30 percent level where a crop emergency could be declared. That step was taken in Tehama County but not here.

The tariffs and the loss of export markets are causing a lot of concern, Mendoza said. “It’s not like you lose them one year and have them back the next. It’s hard to get back in there,” he said.

“The sooner we get the situation resolved, the better for the ag industry.”