Opinion: Changing the narrative around Central Valley almond industry
California’s $11 billion-dollar almond industry is always under the spotlight. You might have heard about the sector’s water consumption or the trucking of bees to pollinate the state’s 1.3 million acres of crops. … Efforts to demonize the almond simply do not help the industry evolve to meet environmental goals and address current issues. Instead, we should be asking questions: How can we increase water use efficiency? How can we prioritize soil health so that almond orchards become an important carbon sink to mitigate global warming? How can almond orchards enable biodiversity and contribute to the overall ecological health of California’s Central Valley? And what’s a fair price for almonds that align with these environmental priorities?
—By Lauren Tucker, project coordinator for The Almond Project and the nonprofit convener White Buffalo Land Trust.