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Welcome to your Weekly Almond Market Update!
Can you believe it's November already? Where does the time go... I'd love to catch up with you and hear how things are going in your world. You can find my calendar here.
Keep reading for this week's latest or sign in to the Bountiful platform to access your Agriculture, Market, and Community data-driven insights.
🙏 A reason to be hopeful?
If you live in California, you know we've been enjoying an uptick in rain this week!
And while rain is helpful to a state that's in the fourth year of drought, it's more interesting to talk about what does this rain event mean for our industry and how is helping us now?
California precipitation received below, 2022 is the blue line.
Let's start with why we're talking about rain?
It's not news that water allocations and access to water are tight to practically non-existent during the 22/23 growing season. Putting pressure on growers to think differently about how to best manage their water budget.
And as we enter a critical stage in the development of next year's crop, I know it feels too soon to talk about it, the rain is supporting post-harvest watering requirements.
Is post-harvest irrigation important?
Yes, post-harvest irrigation is incredibly important in determining the following seasons' yield and ultimately production. Without proper post-harvest irrigation, almond yield has the potential to decline.
And please, don't take my word for it, The Almond Doctor has two articles on this topic, see here and here, summarizing the outcomes of Dr. Goldhammer's research.
How much water is needed to meet post-harvest irrigation needs?
You can measure how much irrigation is needed based on ETc, we have an easy-to-use tool we made for you in the Bountiful platform to uncover the current water demand and total water needed to date for almonds. If you want to talk with me about how to use it and interpret the results let me know.
Ok, so how is the rain helping us with post-harvest irrigation?
Rain, at the right time, offsets the water demand needs from surface and groundwater pumping.
And the rain (total inches) California's received is supporting the post-harvest water demand requirements for almonds across the valley.
The most critical time for post-harvest irrigation is typically defined as mid-August through early November. And orchards in the valley this week got a nice dose of water before going into dormancy or as I like to think of it sleeping through the winter.
You can access the latest Weather and Irrigation data on the Bountiful platform.
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