flor helada, impacto en el precio de la almendra californiana

The strong frosts cause a huge uncertainty among the Californian almond producers

The cold wave and the forecast for following days of low temperatures are causing a great worry among the Californian almond producers.

In this moment almond trees are initiating their flowering, a situation of a huge vulnerability that could produce almond losses if the low temperatures continue. All this can cause a great reduction in the almonds production, what will be translated to a minor offer available in the market that inevitably will lead us to a strong price rise.

As we well know, California is the largest almond producer in the world; with approximately the 80% of the world production thus everyone will notice the impact of these frosts.

Meanwhile, in countries like Spain, the strong storm that is happening is causing also a lot of damages in certain cultivations, almond trees between them, in some zones of the peninsular west the flowering period had started and it has caused many damages in the almond production.

All this facts have caused a huge uncertainty around the almond price, leaving both offer and demand very expectant to this situation.

Drought, the great threat of the Spanish fields

It is obvious the great problem the lack of rain is creating in the Iberian Peninsula. It is a long time without rains, this fact has increase even more the worries of thousands Spanish agricultures. In addition, this lack of water means that the reservoirs have reduce their level of capacity considerably, reaching numbers that we haven’t reach from 22 years ago, putting in danger the availability of water for some cultivations in the Spanish fields.

Facing this situation, the Spanish Agriculture Minister Isabel Garcia Tejerina has announced that if it won’t rain, they could restrict the water use for watering, in order to be able to guarantee the human consumption.

This drought has reduced the productions of many crops; among them we can find almond trees, whose production has dropped around the 25% in relation to the previous season, according to Miguel Blanco, general secretary of the agricultural organization COAG.

This huge problem has caused agricultures hire more insurances, in order to try to reduce the damages this situation is causing.

As final reflection, we want to mention that this problem must be faced when we have water, not when the drought problem exists, thus we need to improve the managing of this source so important to avoid reaching this situations so dramatics as the one we are living in the Spanish fields.