Pistachio Crop Smashes Record

The 2016 Pistachio Crop is one the industry has been anticipating for years.

Bearing acreage has been increasing at a rapid rate. In 2008, there was a total of just 120,000 acres. This year there are 300,000 acres in the ground, about 235,000 of those bearing acres.

Richard Matoian

Richard Matoian

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So it’s not like industry experts like Richard Matoian, executive director of American Pistachio Growers, didn’t see this year’s huge crop coming.

“There is no doubt it is a record crop,” he said in mid-October, “the question is by how much.”

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The previous record was 555 million pounds in 2012. That’s only a little more than half the 1-billion-pound crop Matoian said he expects somewhere around 2020.

And last year’s crop came in at 275 million pounds, just over one-fourth the size. “We knew it would be an ‘off’ year,” he said earlier this year, “but we were expecting about 500 million pounds.”

So in other words, this year is more like it. By late September, when harvest was only 75% complete, Matoian said growers had already delivered what would be a record crop, 619 million pounds. Based on that, the feeling is this year’s crop will top out at about 800 million pounds.

Per-acre yields are up significantly. The 2015 average was just 1,160 pounds per acre, a half ton off the normal “off” year yield of 2,200 to 2,400 pounds per acre, Matoian said. That 2015 per-acre yield was the lowest since 1989.

All Systems Are Go
Yields are up this year for several reasons. First, as mentioned above, even-numbered years are “on” years for a crop that’s alternate-bearing in the extreme.

Second, the trees were extremely well-rested after bearing such a tiny crop in 2015.

Third, though California is still in a drought, the rainfall was near normal this past winter. “While not huge, it was certainly better than what we’ve seen the last three years,” he said. “Growers had more water to work with this year.”

Finally, and perhaps most important, the trees got enough chilling hours this past winter. Indeed, a lot of growers were caught off guard last year because many of the trees that looked normal had plenty of shells, but they were blanks.

That was due to the fact that the female pistachio trees, which produce the nuts, didn’t get adequately pollinated. The male trees, which pollinate the females in a wind-aided process, didn’t mature at the same rates as the females. There is only one male tree for each 20 females, so mistimed bloom was a huge problem in some orchards.

This year the pollination was certainly adequate. Indeed, the crop was so heavy that for the first time in his career, Matoian said growers were reporting broken branches because the nut clusters were so enormous.

 

SIDEBAR: Arizona Bound

arizona-map-feature-imageFirst, let’s be clear: The pistachio industry isn’t getting up and moving.

Fully 99% of the nation’s pistachios are produced in California, and of that, 97% are grown in the San Joaquin Valley between Madera and Kern counties. They’re not grown much farther north because even more so than the Golden State’s other two big tree nut crops, almonds and walnuts, pistachios are highly susceptible to Alternaria from spring rains.

Lately, though, there has been a move to the desert. Like almonds, pistachios are being planted more and more in Arizona and, to a lesser degree, New Mexico. In fact, while there has been a lot of talk among growers about almonds being planted in Arizona, even more pistachios are now being farmed there, said Richard Matoian, executive director of American Pistachio Growers, a voluntary grower association based in Fresno, CA.

The desert floor is too warm for tree nuts in the winter, as the trees don’t get enough chilling hours. But about an hour and a half east of Tucson on Interstate 10, growers are planting both tree nuts and winegrapes. In that area, roughly around the town of Willcox, the elevation is above 3,000 or even 4,000 feet — high enough to provide chilling hours in the winter, but low enough to get plenty of heat in the summer.

But even more recently, Matoian said he’s getting a lot of inquiries about another potential area in Arizona on the other side of the state, not all that far from California. Kingman, AZ, is on Interstate 40, near the Nevada border. Though a long way from Willcox, Kingman shares something in common: The city’s elevation is 3,333 feet.

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