As harvests peak this summer and fall, The Bee will tell you about what's ripe in the Sacramento region.
Almonds
An almond eaten anywhere on the planet likely comes from the Central Valley. After two decades of rapid growth, the state's almond farmers harvest more than 80 percent of the world's supply on 660,000 acres of orchards. This year's crop is projected at 1.5 billion pounds, the third straight record harvest.
Cash crop
In the Sacramento Valley, almond orchards yielded a $431 million harvest last year, rivaling rice as the region's highest-value crop.
Shakin'
Each almond tree produces around 8,000 nuts. At harvest time, a machine with a vibrating claw grabs the tree and shakes the nuts to the ground. Other machines sweep the almonds into rows and vacuum them up.
Nuts to the world
Almonds are by far California's leading farm export, with nearly $1.8 billion in nuts shipped abroad last year, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures.
Big Blue Diamond
Headquartered on C Street in Sacramento, Blue Diamond Growers is the largest tree-nut processor and marketer in the world, handling nuts for roughly half the state's almond farmers. It reported sales of $658 million last year.
Braking a boom?
The expansion of the state's almond orchards has driven fears of a glut and a crash in prices. So far, marketers have managed to sell more almonds around the globe each year. Last year, though, as prices slipped and water supplies grew tenuous, farmers slowed a bit, planting the fewest acres of new almond orchards (around 14,000) since 1992.
Drop the 'L'
The word "almond" has two distinct pronunciations on California farms. In the state's historic almond-growing regions – centered around Oakdale and Chico – the "L" is generally silent, as it is in "salmon." In regions where almonds are relative newcomers, such as the southern San Joaquin Valley, the "L" tends to be pronounced.
The origin of the different pronunciations is unclear. One popular story goes like this: California's early almond farmers liked to say that to harvest their trees, you had to shake the "L" out of them.
Call The Bee's Jim Downing, (916) 321-1065.
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