Almond Living Magazine

Almond Farmer Mike Curry: ‘Being creative with water is a way of life.’

This op-ed was written by Mike Curry and originally appeared in the Modesto Bee. Mike is a board member of the Almond Alliance, alumni of the Almond Leadership Program and an almond huller and sheller with Johnson Farms, a fourth-generation owned and operated almond farm in Denair. “It comes down to two choices: go nuts, if you will, worrying over...

Connection Forged at The Almond Conference Yields On-Farm Irrigation Improvements

Almond Board of California is celebrating its community by running occasional features on farmers, processors, and others who support the industry, highlighting their commitment to sustainability. 1 Former math and physical education teacher Mike Story left teaching two years ago to convert his family’s land into almond orchards. While he was entirely new to growing almonds, learning and education were...

Increased Almond Acreage Means Increased Value to Local Environment

Today, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service reported that California’s almond acreage increased in 2017. Bearing acres, that is orchards old enough to produce a crop, were reported at 1 million acres, which is up 6 percent from 2016. Total almond acres for 2017 were estimated at 1.33 million acres, up 7 percent from the previous year. 1 As you may...

Celebrating Earth Day and Our Journey to Zero Waste

This Earth Day, and every day, California almond farmers and processors practice a zero waste approach, ensuring everything grown in the orchard is put to good use. With support from the Almond Board of California, researchers are investigating new uses of almond coproducts – the hulls, shells, and woody material. These innovations will bring additional value to the California Almond...

Groundwater Recharge Update: Early Results Show No Negative Effect on the Trees

UC Water News published an interview with Dr. Helen Dahlke, an associate professor at UC Davis and Almond Board-funded researcher, in which she discusses her research on the feasibility of recharging underground aquifers by flooding almond orchards and other crops fields. Both experiments have yielded early results which, for almonds, indicate that when practice in winter, groundwater recharge isn’t harmful...

California Almonds: Growing Good with Each Drop

Did you know that growing almonds is a good use of water? That’s right – new research published in the Journal of Ecological Indicators affirms that almonds rank among the most valuable foods grown in California in terms of the dietary and economic benefits for the water needed to produce them. What’s more, research has also found that the water...