jan-feb-2021

IN YOUR ORCHARD MAXIMIZING ALMOND QUALITY...AND PROFITABILITY The Obvious and Not So Obvious Factors that Affect Your Bottom Line The quest for top yields and the highest quality drives an almond grower’s thoughts and labors throughout the year. Fertility and water management are high on the list of priorities required to produce top yields and maximize revenue. Careful monitoring of insect populations, both pest and beneficial species is necessary to reduce damage by insect pests and close scrutiny of disease pressure and environmental conditions are required to reduce losses caused by fungal and bacterial infections. Growers tend to be well aware of the quality levels earned by their almond deliveries during the harvest. Premium values earned by the highest quality deliveries are intended to reward growers producing high value almond deliveries and offset the costs of production. Furthermore, high value deliveries are easier to process, taking less time and lower costs to produce finished products ready for delivery to Blue Diamond ’s customers. The premiums you earn are directly related to the cooperative’s costs. Moreover, optimizing quality premium levels increase in importance as market prices moderate. Simply stated, the premiums become a greater percentage of the total return. Growers tend to focus on three things when considering crop quality: • Foreign Material • Rejects • Chipped & Broken Foreign Material In the case of meat deliveries, foreign material consists of anything other than the kernels themselves. For inshell deliveries, anything other than the kernels and almond shells are consider foreign material. Pieces of hull are the most common foreign material found. However, soil, rocks and wood are also found in deliveries received by Blue Diamond . In areas where peaches are grown, peach pits and fragments of peach pits remaining in the soil are also a common problem. Some growers have planted olive trees around their property and olive pits have been known to find their way into almonds during the harvest. Clearly, planting olive trees in close proximity to almond orchards is never a good idea. Some of the more problematic items found in almond deliveries include plastic, usually from sprinkler or drip irrigation systems, glass and metal. These items are particularly troublesome due to the dangers that they induce if found in finished goods and accidently consumed. While it is true that Blue Diamond has invested in a variety of technologies designed to find and eliminate foreign material from the flow of almonds during processing, each piece introduced during the harvest is a piece that must be removed. This jeopardizes the consumer experience as each piece introduced increases the possibility of something getting through and winding up in the finished product. Allergens are especially troubling in today's highly sensitive food safety environment. Many orchards have oaks in close proximity, and many more have plantings of other tree nuts, including walnuts and pistachios on adjacent lands. Each of these presents a possible source of contamination with serious food safety consequences if consumed by someone with a dangerous food allergy. Growers should sweep and remove any other tree nuts adjacent to almond orchards prior to the shaking to ensure that almonds delivered from their orchards do not present a possible allergen hazard. 3 2 A L M O N D F A C T S