Calif. almond farmers face tough choices due to drought

Associated Press

FIREBAUGH, CALIF.

With California’s agricultural heartland entrenched in drought, almond farmers are letting orchards dry up and in some cases making the tough call to have their trees torn out of the ground, leaving behind empty fields.

In California’s Central Valley, Barry Baker is one of many who hired a crew that brought in large rumbling equipment to perform the grim task in a cloud of dust.

A tractor operator drove heavy steel shanks into the ground to loosen the roots and knock the trees over.

Another operator, driving a brush loader equipped with a forklike implement on the front, scooped up the trees and root balls and pushed them into a pile, where an excavator driver grabbed them up in clusters with a clawing grapple. The trees were fed into a grinder that spit wood chips into piles to be hauled away by the truckload and burned as fuel in a power plant.

Baker, 54, of Baker Farming Company, has decided to remove 20 percent of his trees before they have passed their prime. There’s simply not enough water to satisfy all 5,000 acres of almonds, he said.

“Hopefully, I don’t have to pull out another 20 percent,” Baker said, adding that sooner or later, neighboring farmers will come to the same conclusion. “They’re hoping for the best. I don’t think it’s going to come.”

There are no figures yet available to show an exact number of orchards being removed, but the economic stakes and risks facing growers are clear. Almonds and other nuts are among the most high-value crops in the Central Valley — the biggest producer of such crops in the country. In 2012, California’s almond crop had an annual value of $5 billion.

Meanwhile, meteorologists forecast a pair of storms could dump several inches of rain on parched cities and croplands throughout California in the coming week, bringing welcome news to a state that has just endured its driest year in recorded history.

While the rain won’t be enough to end the drought, the National Weather Service projected Sunday that the much-needed precipitation could nearly double the amount of rainfall in parts of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area this year.

“We’re not calling it a drought-buster, but it definitely will make a difference,” said Jim Bagnall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford, one of many San Joaquin Valley towns where farmers have fallowed crops in anticipation of record low water supplies.