California farmers enjoy pistachio boom, with much of it headed to China

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LOST HILLS, Calif. (AP) — In a sprawling factory in the heart of California’s farmlands, millions of shells rush through a metal chute and onto a conveyor belt where they are inspected, roasted, packaged and shipped to grocery stores around the world.

Pistachios are growing rapidly in California, as farmers devote more land to a crop considered hardier and more drought-tolerant in a state prone to wide fluctuations in rainfall. This crop generated nearly $3 billion last year in California, and in the past decade the United States has overtaken Iran to become the world’s largest exporter of walnuts.

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“There’s been an explosion over the last 10 or 15 years of plantings, and these trees are starting to come up,” said Zachary Fraser, president and CEO of American Pistachio Growers, which represents more than 800 growers in the U.S. Southwest. I began to see the fruit of people’s vision 40 years ago.

California grows more than a third of the nation’s vegetables and three-quarters of its fruits and nuts, according to state agricultural statistics. Data show that pistachios have risen over the past decade to become the state’s sixth-largest agricultural commodity by value, ahead of long-term crops like strawberries and tomatoes.

Much of the crop heads to China, where it is a popular treat during the Lunar New Year. But Americans are also eating more pistachios, which were rarely found in grocery stores a generation ago and today are a snack food found almost everywhere, industry experts said. They are sold with or without shells and flavors range from salt and pepper to roasted honey.

The Wonderful Co., a $6 billion agricultural company known for brands like Halo Mandarins and FIJI Water, is the biggest name in pistachios. The company has grown pistachios since the 1980s, but ramped up its activity in 2015 after developing an asset that produces up to 40% more nuts with the same soil and water, said Rob Yrasborough, president of Wonderful Orchards.

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Wonder now produces between 15% and 20% of the pistachio crop in the United States, he said. Pistachio orchards sprawl across vast expanses of dusty farmland northwest of Los Angeles that are also lined with pomegranates and dairy products. The trees are shaken each fall and the nuts are transported to a massive processing facility to prepare them for sale.

“There is an increasingly high demand for pistachios,” Yrasburu said. “The world wants more.”

Pistachio farmers learn from the struggles of almond farming

Industry experts said pistachios are better prepared to withstand California’s droughts than the larger almond crop, which generated nearly $4 billion in the state last year.

Pistachio orchards can be maintained with minimal water during drought, unlike almonds and other more sensitive crops. The trees also rely on wind rather than bees for pollination and can produce nuts for decades longer, Yrasburu said.

Many California farmers who grow both types of nuts are applying lessons learned from almonds to the pistachio boom. Production of almonds, which are much larger than pistachios, also rose in California, but prices fell amid a post-pandemic supply glut while farmers struggled with drought and high input costs, leading some not to replant old orchards when the time came to plant them. outside.

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Pistachio growers say they hope to avoid a similar fate and are striving to keep demand for the nut ahead of supply. For example, American Pistachio Growers recently signed an endorsement deal with one of India’s top cricketers in hopes of helping promote pistachios there, Fraser said.

The rise of pistachios is part of California farmers’ shift to perennial crops that yield higher yields than products like cotton, according to a 2023 report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Perennial crops, which are not replanted annually, cannot be replaced during drought years, which can be a challenge during widespread drought, said Brad Franklin, a research fellow at the institute’s Water Policy Center.

But pistachios have benefits that other perennial crops do not have. They can survive longer without water and grow in salty soil. That could make it attractive to California farmers who face limits on how much groundwater they can pump under a state law aimed at conserving the vital resource, he said.

When farmers decide what to grow, “I think the most important thing is the market and where the market is,” Franklin said. “And the water is right below that.”

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Farmers face water challenges, but the area under pistachio cultivation has increased

Farmers across California are bracing for the impact of a 2014 state law aimed at ensuring more sustainable use of groundwater after years of overpumping depleted basins and eroding water quality in some rural areas. About a fifth of California’s pistachio crop is grown in areas that rely exclusively on groundwater for irrigation, Yrasboro said, adding that he expects some of these orchards will eventually go out of production.

But over the next few years, pistachio acreage is expected to continue to grow in the state as trees planted in recent years begin to produce production. This contrasts with almond and walnut acreage, which stabilizes or declines as orchards are cleared, said David Magaña, a senior analyst at Rabobank in Fresno, California.

He said pistachios require about 3 acres (3,700 cubic meters) of water per acre (0.4 hectares) compared to about 4 acres (4,934 cubic meters) for almonds and produce more almonds per acre while fetching a higher price.

“The value the pistachio industry brings to California agriculture is close to the value of almonds with a much smaller acreage,” Magaña said. “I have not seen pistachio orchards being uprooted.”

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