AGRICULTURE
ain scarcely fell in the San
Joaquin Valley in 2013, the
second year of California’s
five-year drought and one
of the driest years in the
state’s recorded history.
For Sarah Woolf and her family, grow-
ers of tomatoes, vegetables, grapes and
almonds, these unprecedented con-
ditions, coupled with new restrictions
on groundwater pumping, prompted
a shift of gears: They would plant
drought-hardy pistachios.
Woolf and her family uprooted
about 100 acres of aging almond trees
on their Madera County property and
replanted with pistachios. Six years
later, the trees are starting to produce
nuts. Though slower to reach produc-
ing age than almond trees, pistachios
are just as valuable per pound.
But they are also known for a par-
ticular superpower among fruit trees:
They can tolerate brutally hot and dry
conditions. Whereas almond trees and
grapevines will die if deprived of irri-
gation for a year or less in a dry place
like the San Joaquin Valley, pistachios
can survive for years with almost
no water. That means, in crisis-level
droughts, the trees might persist where
virtually all other crops die. Pistachios
are also tolerant of salty soils, a prob-
lem that affects farmers in parts of the
Central Valley.
The trees’ drought hardiness
inspired the Woolfs to shift from al-
monds to pistachios as a safer bet
for a future of rising temperatures
and, probably, more frequent, more
severe droughts.
“Our almond trees were almost at
the end of their lives, and we had to
pull them out anyway,” Woolf says. “So,
given the current state of things, we
decided it seemed like a better idea to
replant with pistachios.”
The Woolfs are among many
growers now investing in pistachios.
Around the Central Valley, as far
north as Colusa but mostly south of
the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,
pistachio production is rapidly accel-
erating. In 2000, California farmers
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tended to fewer than 75,000 acres of
bearing pistachio trees, according to
a 2018 industry report. By 2017, the
report says bearing acreage was more
than 250,000, with tens of thousands
of acres still too young to produce a
crop and more trees being planted
rapidly. The rate of new plantings,
driven partly by TV advertising, has
also increased; farmers planted 4,000
new acres in 2000 and 30,000 in 2018,
according to Richard Matoian,
executive director of American
Pistachio Growers.
To meet irrigation demands for
the new orchards, pumps and canals
transfer water from the Delta into the
driest parts of the San Joaquin Val-
ley — notably its western side, amid
communities like Mendota, Kettleman
City and Kerman, the latter named for
a popular pistachio variety. Here, lush
orchards have thrived while the estu-
ary’s fish populations have plunged
— trends that conservationists and
fishermen blame on agricultural water
exports but which many farmers claim
they have nothing to do with. Agri-
cultural demand has also affected
community drinking-water supplies.
During the last drought, thousands of
residential wells ran dry.
But these controversies have not
hindered the growth of the state’s
lucrative nut industries. Almonds are
by far the most widely planted crop
in the state. Acreage is approaching
1.4 million — more than 2,000 square
miles — and the annual crop value is
pushing $6 billion.
Pistachios seem to be riding the
same wave, just a decade or two be-
hind. As with any growing agricultural
industry, record crops are recorded
every few years. The latest was in 2018,
when California farmers harvested 986
million pounds of pistachios, a crop
valued at $1.5 billion. Spread across
1,300 growers, that’s an average of
$1.1 million in cash sales per farm
(though some growers, like Stewart
and Lynda Resnick, who own
California-based The Wonderful Com-
pany, farm disproportionately more
land than others). Harvest is expected
to exceed 1 billion pounds this year,
and forecasts show the state’s pistachio
groves producing more than 1.4 billion
pounds by 2026.
At the American Pistachio Growers,
an industry group in Fresno, Matoian
says global demand for both almonds
and pistachios is strong, but pistachios
may be more appealing for farmers
with unstable water supplies.
“Pistachios require a little less
water for irrigation than almonds, but
the big factor is that when the water
runs out, and you can’t give them any,
pistachios have higher survival rates,”
Matoian says. “A lot of growers are
considering this.”
Groundwater pumping
changes fuel growth
Playing into the shift toward pista-
chios is the state’s restrictions on
pumping groundwater that will soon
take effect. Three bills passed in 2014
and collectively called the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act will
require local-level agencies to monitor
well use and halt the overdrawing of
aquifers, which has been so severe in
parts of the San Joaquin Valley that
the surface of the Earth is collapsing.
Though sorely needed to stabilize
crashing water tables, the law has
farmers concerned about impacts to
their industry, which relies mostly on
groundwater in some regions. Water
policy analysts have estimated that
SGMA will force farmers to pull as
much as 1 million acres of irrigated
land from production.
“SGMA was the biggest factor for us
when we started planting pistachios,”
says Woolf, whose family depends en-
tirely on groundwater withdrawals for
irrigating some of their land.
Tom Coleman, owner of the
Coleman Farming Co. in Fresno, has
planted about 8,000 acres of pistachios
in the past decade and is planting sev-
eral thousand more. Like the Woolfs,
Coleman has uprooted thousands of
almond trees to make way for what he
sees as a wiser investment. “I think