What is the current state of the almond industry and what’s ahead in the future? AgNet West talked with Richard Waycott, President and CEO of the Almond Board of California, for this week’s almond update.
Waycott talked about the current almond market and what may lie ahead in the future. “It’s been quite an amazing year. We obviously started off last harvest with the industry thinking the crop size was going to be lower than the objective estimate and pricing climbed even higher. As we got into fall, the conventional wisdom switched to thinking the official number looked pretty accurate,” Waycott said.
That switch led to a price change which in turn may be creating a good demand situation for the industry. “Based on that and a lot of other reasons we saw a considerable price adjustment that took place in the early fall and winter months. That has created a market environment of certainly lower price levels to our customers and consumers. As you may have seen in the position report in the last four months or so we have experienced a turn around very much in demand going into this harvest,” Waycott said. “I think there was a lot of pent up demand that the lower price has unleashed and we are very optimistic going into this new crop year.”