5 posts
The planting data indicates where new trees are going in. The removals data tells us where existing orchards are coming out. Taken together, they paint a far more complete picture of the trajectory of California's almond supply than either dataset alone.
Across this series, we've documented several shifts in where California's almonds and pistachios are being planted: away from Westlands , toward the Tule sub-basin, northward into the Sacramento Valley .
Westlands Water District, on the west side of California's San Joaquin Valley, is the largest agricultural water district in the United States by acreage. For decades, it was one of the most important destinations for new almond and pistachio plantings.
In our previous post , we showed that California almond plantings have collapsed from their 2016 peak. But the decline was not smooth. 2020 stands out as an anomaly.
California's almond and pistachio sectors are planting fewer acres than at any point in the modern era. Demeter has cross-referenced a variety of datasets, including the Department of Water Resources' Land Use Mapping, to track every acre of almonds and pistachios planted and rem…