California Shipping Outlook includes Dates, Walnuts, Almonds, and Pistachios

Dates-medjoolHere’s a shipping outlook for dates and various nuts coming out of California.

A bumper crop of California date shipments is seen by some coming out the Southern California desert region, with yields reported to be 20 percent higher than last season.

Harvest got underway with the beginning of September.  Among the major California date shippers are Hadley Date Gardens of Thermal, Atlas Produce and Distribution of Bakersfield, and Sunsweet Growers Inc. of Yuba City.

Walnut and Almond Shipments

California grows and ships nearly all walnuts in the U.S. and has 315,000 bearing acres due to the region’s mild climate and deep fertile soils providing ideal growing conditions.

2016 California walnut shipments are forecast at 670,000 tons, up 11 percent  from 2015’s volume of 603,000 tons.  For the season starting in 2016 there was an impressive 16.8 percent jump in loadings.  Growing conditions and quality are reported good for the 2017 crop.  One of the larger California nut shippers is Mariani Nut Co. of Winters, CA,  which grows almonds and walnuts in the Sacramento Valley on 14,000 irrigated acres.

This year’s pistachio shipments are predicted to be down significantly from a year ago, while the walnut volume also is off, with almonds projected to be up 5 percent.  Pistachio volume is expected to be about 650 million pounds, while volume a year ago exceeded 900 million pound as the nut is known for it alternate bearing years with up and down shipments from season to season.  A leading pistachio shipper is Meridian Growers of Fresno.

California walnut shipments are forecast at 650,000 tons, down 5 percent from a year ago when there were record loadings amounting to 686,000 tons.  The 2017 California walnut loadings are pegged at 2.25 billion meat pounds coming off of 1 million bearing acres, an increase of 5.1 percent from last year’s 2.14 billion pounds.

Wonderful Pistachio and Almonds of Los Angeles is a leading shipper of pistachios and almonds that launched a football campaign earlier this month featuring Richard Sherman of Seattle and Clay Matthews of Green Bay.

 

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