California is the largest almond-producing state in America, growing more than 1 million tons of the nut each year. Farmers are looking to adopt regenerative practices to stay ahead of the state’s varying weather patterns.
While research on climate-smart practices has been studied individually, little has been done to study the combined effect of these efforts.
Researchers at UC Davis are looking to change that by comparing management approaches and giving farmers a better understanding of the outcomes.
The university’s extension team will play a key role in disseminating those findings and developing best management practices and even economic planning tools.
Leadership at Blue Diamond Growers was shocked to discover that one of the most crucial problems for almond growers often goes overlooked— pests.
The company says that without fully understanding the cause of pest problems in orchards, growers are really left exposed.
“I was stunned to learn a few years ago that other growers don’t have that information available to them as to what caused the problem. Was it navel orange worm; was it ants; was it plant bugs? And proper identification of what the pest was that caused your problem is crucial because you don’t want to be chasing navel orange worm if you’ve got a plant bug problem,” according to Mel Machado.
He says that at Blue Diamond they take a different approach.
“In our case, at Blue Diamond, we can provide that information and we can provide it upon request on, literally, around their payment statement,” he explains. If they didn’t request it right away, they can come and come back to us, call us, and we’re happy to provide that up to a point. Once we get past December, we start throwing samples back into the plant.”
Since 1910, the Blue Diamond Cooperative has been run by growers and today serves as the world’s largest almond processor.
