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September 18, 2015 CapitalPress.com Subscribe to our weekly California email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters Some orchards seeing 70 percent ‘blanks’ By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press DAVIS, Calif. — Pistachio yields are coming in lighter than expected as some growers are encountering more empty shells than normal because of the drought and other factors. At Fiddyment Farms in Lincoln, Calif., dry conditions have led to an early harvest, said Memphis Burton, who was operating a booth for the company at a farmers’ market here. “They said it’s not going to yield as much as it has in the past,” Burton said. While the pistachio har- vest normally begins around Sept. 1, many farms were al- ready shaking trees and gath- ering nuts from catch basins by mid-August, said Richard Matoian, executive director of American Pistachio Growers in Fresno. What many have found is an inordinate amount of “blanks” — fully formed shells in which a nut never de- veloped inside, Matoian said. In a typical season, blanks might make up 10 percent of a crop, but in some orchards this season the number is closer to 70 percent, he said. A big reason is a lack of chilling hours in the winter, which causes the male and female trees in an orchard to bloom at different times. An orchard needs about 800 hours at below 45 degrees, which hasn’t happened for two suc- cessive winters. “Normally they’d all be synchronized in what they do” during bloom, Matoian said. Because of the uneven blos- som, “the nutlets don’t get pol- lenized,” he said. “No. 2 would be the drought,” he said. “Lack of water causes those trees that are stressed to not fill the shell with a viable nut.” The low yields come after industry insiders had expected a crop of at least 450 million pounds, with a possibility of meeting or surpassing last year’s 520 million pound crop. Now growers say the crop could be as small as 350 mil- lion pounds. The light yields are a blip of sorts amid a winning streak for pistachios, whose populari- ty and acreage have ballooned in recent years. There are now more than 300,000 acres of pistachios in the ground, with 225,000 acres bearing, com- pared to 105,000 bearing acres in 2005, Matoian said. Nearly all of the United States’ pistachio production is in California, and 97 percent of that is in the San Joaquin Valley. The acreage is booming despite the drought, largely because pistachio trees have a longer life span than other nut trees and can survive several years in a row of water stress even if they don’t produce nuts, Matoian said. Matoian believes that once the orchards receive enough chilling hours and water in a season, the state could be in for a huge pistachio crop. “We’ve had successive years of below-normal per- acre yields due to the lack of chilling hours and due to the drought, but I think there’s go- ing to be a year when we get a perfect storm, when every- thing is going to line up and we’ll have a large crop,” he said. ‘We’re not there yet, but the acres are in the ground to support a huge crop,” he said. “We just need chilling hours, we need water and we need to have sunshine during the sum- mer months.” California El Nino: Wet S. California, dry NW By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press Forecasters say they are now confident that El Nino’s southern storms will boost rainfall this winter as far north as Sacramento in California, but the Pacific Northwest will likely be drier than normal. Federal Climate Prediction Center officials said Sept. 10 there’s a 95 percent chance that strong El Nino conditions will persist through the winter before gradually weakening next spring. During the winter, odds favor increased chances for above-normal precipitation across the southern part of the United States and up the East Coast, officials said. But the inland Pacific Northwest should anticipate below-normal rainfall, while the Oregon and Washington coasts and much of Northern California have equal chances of above- or below-average precipitation, according to the CPC’s three-month winter out- NASA via AP These false-color images provided by NASA satellites compare warm Pacific Ocean water tempera- tures from the strong El Nino that brought North America large amounts of rainfall in 1997, left, and the current El Nino as of Aug. 5, right. Warmer ocean water that normally stays in the western Pacific, shown as lighter orange, red and white areas, moves east along the equator toward the Americas. Forecasters say this El Nino is already the second strongest on record for this time of year and could be one of the most potent weather changers in 65 years. look. Temperatures throughout the West are expected to be higher than normal this winter, complicating chances for an abundant snowpack, according to the outlook. “One thing to caution a little bit is that these are prob- abilistic forecasts,” Mike Halpert, the center’s deputy director, told reporters in a conference call. “We could be surprised.… There have been a couple of big El Ninos when I don’t think it was really dry anywhere across the country. Everywhere was above nor- mal. “But the most likely case (in the Northwest) is drier than average conditions,” he said. El Nino is a warming of the ocean at the equator that interacts with the atmosphere, changing the jet stream that drives the winter storm track. There have been six previous El Nino periods since 1950, and this one has the potential to rate near the top in terms of strength. Some scientists have char- acterized this El Nino as a “monster” or “Godzilla” storm track, predicting that it could produce the kind of wet winter that California saw in 1982- 83 and 1997-98, when nearly double the state’s average pre- cipitation fell. However, Halpert said such descriptions are “not helpful” as state and federal officials have worked to tamp down expectations that this winter could end the drought. State Climatologist Michael Ander- son reiterated Sept. 10 that past El Nino events have produced mixed results in Northern Cal- ifornia, where key reservoirs are situated. Conditions ripe for big navel orange crop By TIM HEARDEN Capital Press SACRAMENTO — Grow- ers and the USDA are bracing for a drought-defying bumper crop of navel oranges in the 2015-2016 season. The National Agricultur- al Statistics Service’s initial navel orange forecast is 86 million cartons, up more than 8 percent from last season’s 76 million cartons harvested, even with at least 2,000 few- er acres of bearing trees in the ground. While California Citrus Mutual, a growers’ group with more than 2,000 members, argued that last year’s NASS initial prediction of 81 mil- lion cartons was too high, the group mostly agrees with this forecast. “It wasn’t too much of a surprise given what we’ve been hearing from the guys in the field and observing,” said Bob Blakely, vice president of the Exeter-based Citrus Mutu- al. “The unknown in there is knowing how much acreage has actually been taken out (because of a lack of water). They’ve said it’s 2,000 acres. “Most of our growers feel like they’re seeing more fruit on the trees and the size is bet- ter,” Blakely said. “Combining the two of those factors, it does look like the crop is going to be a little bit up from last year.” The big crop estimate is fueled by reports that fruit size is larger and fruit set, especial- ly on late varieties, is better in most groves, according to Citrus Mutual. The improved fruit size is attributed to time- ly rainfall and good growing conditions fol- lowing petal fall last spring, the group explains. As a strong El Nino is ex- pected to bring Blakely more rain than normal this win- ter in the San Joaquin Valley, early rains could result in ad- ditional growth that would equate to more cartons, Citrus Mutual states. NASS’ survey indicated a fruit set per tree of 412, above the five-year average of 336, and the average Sept. 1 diam- eter was at 2.248 inches, above the five-year average of 2.23 inches. Warm temperatures this summer improved the oranges’ brix, or sugar content, raising hopes for good flavor, Citrus Mutual explained. The harvest is expected to begin in early October. BUYING 6” and UP Alder and Maple Saw Logs, Standing Timber www.cascadehardwood.com 36-7/#24 Pistachio shells empty; yields down 9 John Deere Dealers See one of these dealers for a demonstration 38-2/#4N