Westlands Water District - from California's biggest planting destination to marginal

Part 4 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.

Westlands Water District, on the west side of California's San Joaquin Valley, is the largest agricultural water district in the United States by acreage. For decades, it was one of the most important destinations for new almond and pistachio plantings. That is no longer the case.

Almonds

Through most of the 2010s, Westlands consistently attracted 3,000-5,500 acres (~1,200-2,200ha) of new almond plantings per year, typically accounting for 4-5% of all California almond planting. In 2022, that fell to roughly 1,300 acres (~525ha). With the caveat that young plantings are harder to identify in their early years and therefore tend to be slightly understated, 2023 and 2024 show negligible new plantings. Even controlling for under-detection, the trend is clear.

Pistachios

The shift is even more notable given Westlands' historically outsized role in pistachio planting. The district regularly absorbed 20-30% of all in-district pistachio plantings through the 2010s, peaking at over 8,500 acres (~3,400ha) in 2020 alone. 2023 and 2024 saw only a few hundred acres each, again indicating a clear trend even accounting for the under-detection.

Source: Demeter

Westlands' water supply comes primarily from the Central Valley Project (CVP), a federal system whose allocations to the district have been volatile and at times severely curtailed. In drought years, CVP allocations to Westlands have fallen to 0% of contracted amounts. This volatility has long been a known risk, but the planting data suggests growers now respond to that risk differently.

The decline is not simply a function of the overall planting downturn. Even adjusting for lower total volumes, Westlands' share of both almond and pistachio plantings has contracted meaningfully. For pistachios, where total planting remained strong through 2022, Westlands' share fell from roughly 25% in 2020 to under 11% in 2022 and under 5% by 2024.

During the period averages, Westlands accounted for approximately 19% of all in-district pistachio planting since 1984. Since 2020, that figure is approximately 19% — but this is heavily front-loaded to 2020-2021. The 2023-2024 figures represent a significant break from the historical pattern.

The removals data, which we examine in a companion memo, sharpens this picture further. Westlands is not just seeing an absence of new planting. It is experiencing the most concentrated orchard removal of any district in the state. In 2022-2024, roughly 32k acres (~13k ha) of almonds were removed from Westlands, dramatically exceeding even historical average planting rates, let alone the reduced rates of recent years. In 2023 alone, more almond acreage was removed from Westlands than the district has planted in total since 2020.

Next in this series: Where in the state is capital flowing?

You can download a complete report here.