Almond and pistachio plantings in California have fallen dramatically

Part 1 of 10 in a series on the almond and pistachio sectors in California. Download a complete report here and explore the underlying data in a standalone application here.

California's almond and pistachio sectors are planting fewer acres than at any point in the modern era. Demeter has cross-referenced a variety of datasets, including the Department of Water Resources' Land Use Mapping, to track every acre of almonds and pistachios planted and removed in the state over a period of four decades.

The granularity of the analysis exposes a number of dynamics that may be hidden in the high-level aggregates.

It is important to highlight that accurately detecting young orchards is difficult, and they tend to be underrepresented in data. Greater weight should be put on relative figures and trends than on absolute levels for very recent plantings.

California almond and pistachio plantings (acres) 2014-2024. Source: Demeter

Almonds peaked at nearly 136k acres (~55k ha) of new plantings in 2016. By 2024, that figure had fallen below 12k acres (~5k ha) - a decline of more than 90%. Even if we were to adjust for likely underdetection, finding a year with fewer almond acres planted requires looking back to the late 1980s, when the California almond industry was a fraction of its current size.

Pistachios told a different story for longer. Total pistachio plantings remained robust through 2022, with roughly 41k acres (~17k ha) planted that year, which was close to the all-time high. But 2023 and 2024 brought a sharp contraction. Just 6,100 acres (~2.5k ha) were planted in 2024, a level not seen since the early 2000s. Again this picture does not materially change even if the figure is inflated by a multiple of 2-3x to account for potential underdetection.

These numbers relate to plantings only. We address removals in subsequent briefs. New plantings are the leading indicator of future supply, since an almond tree planted today will not produce a meaningful crop for three years at a minimum; a pistachio tree, six or seven. The planting decisions being made now (and not made now) shape supply curves well into the next decade.

The data also allows us to distinguish between plantings made inside irrigation districts - where growers have access to district-managed surface water - and plantings made outside districts, on what is sometimes known as "white lands," where growers are dependent on groundwater. More specifically still, we can investigate the profile of orchards in individual districts, groundwater basins and Groundwater Sustainability Agencies as required by California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

We will also present data on orchard removals. This includes the locations of removed orchards, their age at removal and the resulting net planting position.

This series uses data to explore how the two crops have diverged in their responses to water constraints, which districts and basins are gaining or losing planting activity, and the emerging geography of these two powerhouse permanent crops in a post-SGMA California.

Next in this series: The 2020 anomaly - a white lands planting spike on the eve of The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)

Download a complete report here.