Nick Rocca FresnoCounty almondand raisin grower Green field prices for grapes are higher than
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normal, so a lot of farmers that nor- mally grow grapes to be made into raisins are elect- ing—because it’s
an early year—to sell grapes for early-variety champagne or sell to a dehydrator to make golden raisins instead of laying them down on the ground and drying them. This, cou- pled with more acres that have been pulled out, means that the crop size for raisins will be lower again. That seems to be the trend. Harvest is going to be early this year. We’ll start cutting canes in mid-August, and then harvest will likely happen at the end of August. Coming out of COVID, people are now finally deciding to get back to work, but that’s compounded with people making more money staying at home. We have 80 acres of almonds, and be- cause I don’t have enough acreage to own the equipment to harvest just my ranch, we hire a harvesting company to come in and harvest our almonds. For harvesting al- monds, some growers offered to pay more for harvesters, and that’s been driving up the hourly price for other farmers. The extra markup on labor is because no one can find anyone that wants to work, so the ones that want to work, they’re given extra.
Chris Capaul Sutter County farmer
I cut back 100 acres on
the baby limas. They were just planted. They’re about a 70- to 90-day bean, so you plant them in June, July. On
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dry beans, the market is so terrible. Since COVID, the Japanese haven’t been buying like they used to, because their country has been shut down. They use baby limas to make more of a confectionary-type product. They sell a lot of it to tourists. They’re not having parties and there’s not a lot of travel over there. The whole bean market in California is about half of what it was last year. The price is not good and the competition of other crops that are better I think has made a dif- ference there. I know in my area, there are only two or three people that are growing the baby limas. Most of them switched to black-eyes. The black-eyed market looks better in price, but there’s still not as much grown in the state. People aren’t growing them because the price isn’t that great, and there’s not a big demand at the moment.
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4 Ag Alert July 21, 2021
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