USDA Reports 928,000 Total California Grape Acres

California’s 2014 grape acreage totaled 928,000 acres, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), California Field Office.

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Of the total grape acreage, 865,000 were bearing, while 63,000 were non-bearing. The wine-type grape acreage is estimated at 615,000 acres.  Of the total acres, 565,000 were bearing and 50,000 were non-bearing.

Table-type grape acreage totaled 121,000 acres with 110,000 bearing and 11,000 non-bearing.  Acreage of raisin-type grapes totaled 192,000 acres, of which 190,000 were bearing and 2,000 were non-bearing.

However, Nat DiBuduo, president of Allied Grape Growers, says there are some discrepancies between the NASS numbers (which come from a voluntary survey) and its own, which come initially from the Grape Acreage Report but are then supplemented with numbers from AGG’s annual grapevine nursery survey.

The NASS estimate of 565,000 bearing acres is quite close to AGG’s recent estimate of 555,000. However, DiBuduo says there’s a relatively large discrepancy in the non-bearing acres.

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“We believe there are more non-bearing acres, based on our nursery survey,” he says.

While NASS reports just 50,000 non-bearing acres, AGG estimates that number to be about 100,000 acres. Over the last three years, about 100,000 acres of vines have been sold to growers for planting, and the assumption is that those were all non-bearing acres in 2014.

The NASS report also doesn’t account for acreage removal, DiBuduo notes. As of the end of March, 30,000 acres of vines had been removed from the San Joaquin Valley, according to AGG, two-thirds of those being winegrapes.

AGG also suspects there are another few thousand acres that have been removed in the coastal regions. However, AGG is projecting about 32,000 new acres will come into production from 2012 plantings.

Overall, AGG anticipates a producing acreage base this year that is relatively unchanged from 2014.

Sources: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service and Allied Grape Growers

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