The Lucrative Crop That’s Not Cut Out for the California Drought
California almonds are popular and lucrative for farmers, but they also require a lot of water that the state doesn’t have:
Products like almond butter and almond milk have also become increasingly popular in health food stores. But growing almonds in an arid climate requires lots of water. In fact, Westlands’ almond orchards suck up nearly 100 billion gallons of water a year. Cotton, by contrast, needs 40 percent less water per acre, and tomatoes require about half as much water as almonds. Also, unlike cotton and tomatoes, almonds are a “permanent” crop, meaning the land they’re grown on can’t lie fallow when water is scarce. “It means farmers really do need to get a hold of water in dry years in order to keep the trees alive,” explained Ellen Hanak, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and an expert on water.
Almonds, in short, aren’t cut out for droughts. And unless the coming months bring a deluge of rain and snow to California, the almond growers of the western San Joaquin Valley could be in for a catastrophic year.