The Almond Board of California Board of Directors and Committee Chairs met this past January to conduct strategic planning for the California almond industry, as they have every two years since 2016. Topics of discussion included global almond production, industry profitability, changing demographics of the industry, pollination services and self-compatible varieties, and the impact of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) on the California agricultural footprint in the next 20 years.
The Board of Directors’ strategic retreat is an important step in an ongoing process to ensure a successful almond industry in California for generations to come. It also helps ensure the Board is meeting its fiduciary responsibility to the industry by anticipating challenges and capitalizing on opportunities to grow demand for California almonds.
At the 2016 retreat the Board discussed the need to build demand to absorb the projected increase of 600 million pounds by 2020 – a significant challenge facing the industry at the time. Following the 2016 retreat the Board decided to pursue a three-year, one cent per pound increase in the assessment, which went into effect the following year and ended with the 2018-19 crop year. The temporary assessment increase allowed the Almond Board to invest in growing demand in existing markets like the US, EU, India and China while developing new markets including Germany, South Korea, Japan and Mexico.
At the 2018 Board strategic retreat the discussion focused on the need to drive innovation in four key areas of production, which became the Almond Orchard 2025 Goals, launched in 2019. In the first year of the journey, the goals have helped focus resources and research needed to continuously improve the way we grow almonds to meet global demand for sustainable and nutritious foods. Increasingly, the way we grow almonds is as important a demand driver as the nutrition and versatility that have been key to our success in the past.
The recent 2020 Board strategic retreat built on those that preceded it by looking at changes coming to the industry in the next 20 years. Discussion then focused on the next five years, including projected growth in California production of 750 million pounds, reaching 3.3 billion pounds by 2025. This estimate aligns with known plantings and other expert projections. Even by the most conservative estimates, the challenge ahead is equal to or greater than the one faced by the industry in 2016.
Given these projections, the Board instructed staff to plan for a variety of scenarios to continue to grow markets for California almonds and protect the significant investment the industry has made in the past 20 years in building demand. In the next month the 2020 retreat participants will meet again to review these scenarios and discuss the resources needed to ensure continued demand for our growing supply of California almonds. This information will be further considered at the next Board meeting, which will be held in Modesto on April 8.
