The Water Question, Answered Plainly
We are not going to tell you almonds are a low-water crop. They are not. What we can tell you is which water our orchards run on, and whether it will still be there in ten years.
Irrigation is pressurized double-line drip, scheduled by soil moisture probes and pressure-chamber stem water potential readings rather than by a calendar. Through the hull-split window our growers run regulated deficit irrigation, a deliberate and measured stress late in the season that concentrates the kernel, raises oleic acid and reduces hull rot. It uses less water and makes better oil, which is an unusually clean alignment of interests.
Across drip conversion, deficit irrigation and on-farm recharge in wet years, our growers apply roughly thirty to thirty-five percent less water per pound of kernel than the district average. Recharge means flooding fallow ground in winter so surplus soaks back into the aquifer instead of running to the ocean. Applied water efficiency sits above ninety percent, against roughly sixty to seventy percent for the flood irrigation still in use on older orchards.
The wider picture is worth stating too. California recorded its first decline in bearing almond acreage since 1995 this year, driven almost entirely by the southern San Joaquin Valley, where allocations in some subbasins have fallen to 1.6 acre-feet per acre against a crop needing three to four. Orchard values on groundwater-dependent parcels fell twenty-five to fifty percent across 2023 and 2024, and new plantings are moving north toward Sacramento, Yolo and San Joaquin counties for water certainty, accepting lower yields to get it.
