What's on the Mind of the Almond Growers

What's on the Mind of the Almond Growers

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
Almond hullers and shellers interact with growers and often know what are the biggest concerns on their minds.

Dave Thiel is general manager of Cortez growers Association in Turlock Dave Thiel is the general manager of the Cortez Growers Association in Turlock and almond huller, sheller, and processor.

We asked Thiel, what are almond growers thinking about lately? “It kind of depends on the year. There was a few years ago when we were in the middle of the drought you could not have a conversation that didn't end up in water.” Thiel said.

“And now there's a lot of other issues, like what are we going to do with the volume, the price that we're going to be receiving now. And their continue to be many regulations that are coming down at that time.

Of course on of them is the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA).

“SGMA is an issue and it's always at the back of everybody's mind that is in agriculture, the Almond Alliance and other trades organizations here in the state are banding together to fight that. Property taxes are another one that will affect us,”

said Thiel. “Prop 15 is coming up on the next ballot and it’s going to have a big effect on agriculture, whether or not they say it will or not, it will. And we need to get on the right side of that, which is to defeat that proposition.”

Again, we all need a vote against prop 15.

In more news, if growers are still harvesting the late season almond varieties, minimize bark damage from shakers, as much as possible by closely inspecting the shaking process and stop that operation until the problem is resolved. A delayed harvest will also increase the amount of navel orange worm damage.

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