California Almond Board has released the February Almond Position

The Almond Board of California has released the February Almond Position Report with shipments of  +186.9 million pounds compared to 190.1 million pounds last year for a decrease of  1.7% percent.

Domestic Shipments      +58.71 million pounds   +8.7% ( new record)

Export Shipments:          +128.54 million pounds                -5.7%

The crop year to date shipments from August through February are at 1.403 billion pounds compared to  1.422 billion pounds last year for a decrease of 1.29 percent. CThe Crop Receipts are now at  +2.262 billion pounds compared to 2.250 billion pounds last year for a small increase of +0.52 percent.. 

For the past four weeks all eyes have been on the Almond Bloom in California.  The weather was less than ideal, with cooler temperatures and heavy rainfall occurring.    The cold weather prolonged the bloom by at least an extra week in some parts of the valley.  Heavy rains delayed the bloom as well.  Positive point is the ground is well saturated (wet) and the trees will work less to pull up moisture from the ground for the coming weeks as the leaves and nutlets develop.  In the Sacramento area, this season we have received over 20.25 Inches of rain, our normal for this time of the year is only 14.47 inches and last year to this date we had only received 10.48 inches of rain!  Snow Pack in the Sierra are +150% to +160% of normal for this time of the year.  Parts of Lake Tahoe received over 25 feet of snow in February alone( over 8 meres of snow in 1 month)!  Bee Flight hours were less than ideal for the State with the cooler weather and rains.  The North part of the State was impacted the most with limited Bee Flight Hours while the Southern part of the State to a lesser degree.  Keep in mind the Independence Variety does not require any bees for pollination. During the month of February, overall market had steady activity,  as buyers were waiting to see the results of the bloom and growers were concerned with selling while the bloom received too much rain and cool weather.  Prices on Stds and small Cal SSR all climbed upwards with Stds reaching $2.80 FAS and NP X 23/25 at $3.10 per lbs FAS.  Limited new crop demand/ sales took place as well.  The industry is now 74% sold on salable crop and carry in.  New sales during February were 149,978,326 pounds.