More than a billion pounds of almonds—enough to give everybody on the planet a good-sized handful of the nuts—are stuck in storage in California because of supply chain issues, and farmers aren't sure what they're going to do with a harvest of 2.8 billion pounds this year. Almonds were the state's top agricultural export last year, worth around $4.7 billion, per Food and Wine, but growers are having big problems getting them to buyers overseas, meaning they're not getting paid. The state produces more than 80% of the world's almonds, though the industry has been criticized for its heavy water usage.
The biggest issue keeping the almonds from reaching customers is a shortage of shipping containers, which are in such short supply that carriers bringing exports from Asia to gridlocked southern California ports are sending containers back empty instead of waiting to pick up cargo at the Port of Oakland, the gateway for agricultural exports from central California, per the Los Angeles Times. "You know what the No. 1 export of the United States is over the last few months? Air," almond grower Scott Phippen told the San Francisco Chronicle in April. The backlog is now around 1.3 billion pounds of almonds.
Growers say that since they haven't been able to get their almonds delivered, they're running out of money to perform maintenance on their trees. The industry is seeking state and federal help. Aubrey Bettencourt, chief executive of the Almond Alliance of California, tells the Times that railroad companies helped set up a "pop-up" terminal at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex. "We have to go where there are boats that will move our products," Bettencourt says. "So, it’s all aboard the new almond express trains rolling into LA harbor." Growers have also been looking into having their almonds, which have a shelf life of around two years, moved by rail to the Gulf Coast for export. (More almonds stories.)
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