Where do almonds come from?

In 2024 United States produced 2 million tonnes, 51% of the world's 3.9 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Australia followed with 9.4%, then Spain (9.4%), Turkey (Türkiye) (5.1%) and Morocco (4.1%). The top five account for 79%, 61 countries reported output and 10% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +43% over the ten years to 2024 and +12% on the previous year.

FAOSTAT counts almonds in shell while the trade quotes kernels, and the shelling loss is large enough that the two tonnages are not comparable. On the in-shell basis the crop runs down California's Central Valley in an almost continuous belt of orchard. Australia's plantings along the Murray harvest in the southern autumn and reach northern buyers when the Californian crop is old.

The Mediterranean producers are a different industry. Spain's traditional groves in Andalusia and Aragón are rainfed, low yielding and planted to hard-shelled local varieties, though intensive irrigated orchards have gone in beside them. Turkey (Türkiye), Morocco and Tunisia grow on the same pattern for regional markets. Frost during the February bloom is the recurring hazard, because almond flowers earlier than any other temperate tree crop.

United States was the largest exporter of shelled almonds (HS 080212) in 2024 with 65% of world export value, ahead of Spain (12%), on world trade of $5.2 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 9%.

The in-shell line is a separate and much smaller trade. In 2024 United States supplied 77% of an in-shell trade worth $1.6 billion, while India took 62% of imports and China was second with 18%. Both crack the nuts at home, which is why they buy whole and the rest of the world buys kernels.

Import rankings mislead. Germany, Spain and the United Arab Emirates rank high because they blanch, dice and re-export, not because they eat the volume. Spain is at once a large producer, importer and exporter, buying Californian kernels to top up a variable home crop.

There is no futures market and no free public benchmark price for almonds, so this site quotes none. Growers sell to handlers either through a cooperative pool, where the return is settled at the end of the marketing year, or by outright sale at a negotiated price per pound, agreed by variety and by kernel size, count and grade.

What the market watches instead is the monthly industry position report of receipts, shipments and uncommitted inventory published under the Californian federal marketing order, alongside private trade assessments. Kernels keep for a year or more in cold store, so carryover is part of current supply, and the ratio of committed sales to inventory moves negotiated prices more than the harvest does.

Almond is self-incompatible and flowers in February, before wild pollinators are active, so orchards must be stocked with rented honeybee hives. The bloom pulls more than half the managed colonies in the United States into one valley for three weeks, and hive rental is among the largest orchard costs.

The trees must be watered every year or they die, so a grower cannot fallow in a dry year as a row-crop farmer can. Surface deliveries from the state and federal projects are cut in drought, and groundwater pumping is capped basin by basin under a law passed in 2014.

Buds need winter cold to break evenly, and a warm winter gives a straggling bloom the bees cannot service. Frost, rain or wind during flowering cuts nut set directly, so the crop is fixed within weeks of the bloom.

Because kernels store, the previous crop's unsold inventory competes with the new one. Handlers price against sales already committed rather than the harvest, so a slow autumn shipping season weighs on what growers are offered next season.

Retaliatory duties imposed by China, Turkey and India from 2018 raised the landed cost of Californian kernels in large markets. Almonds also move in ordinary dry boxes, and when carriers repositioned empties to Asia in 2021 exporters could not ship crop they had sold.

Almond trees are grafted onto rootstock and planted in blocks mixing a main variety with pollinizers, because almost every commercial variety needs pollen from a different tree. Orchards bear from the third or fourth year and stay productive for decades. Bloom is in February; hives arrive a few days before it opens and leave after petal fall.

The nut is a drupe, and what is eaten is the kernel inside the stone. Through the summer the hull dries and splits on the tree. Harvest runs from August into October: a mechanical shaker drops the crop onto the orchard floor, where it dries in windrows before being swept up and carted to a huller-sheller.

There the hull comes off, the shell is cracked, and kernels are sized, graded and sorted for insect damage. Since 2007 almonds sold into the United States must pass a validated treatment step, by steam or fumigation, to reduce salmonella. Kernels then go into cold store.

Most almonds are eaten as kernels, whole, roasted, salted or coated, and as manufacturing ingredients: blanched and diced for bakery, ground into marzipan and praline, milled into flour for gluten-free baking, and stone-ground into butter. Almond drinks have been the fastest-growing outlet, though they absorb little of the crop by weight because the kernel content of the finished drink is low.

The by-products are used in full. Hulls, which outweigh the kernel, are fed to Californian dairy cattle and earn real revenue rather than counting as waste; shells go to bedding, to cogeneration boilers and to abrasives. Kernels rejected on grade are pressed for cosmetic oil or diverted into paste.

The chain is short and concentrated. Growers deliver to a huller-sheller, and the crop passes to a handler, of which there are a few dozen, who grades, treats, packs and sells it; the largest is a grower cooperative. One state's harvest, one regulatory regime and one set of handlers determine most of the world's supply.

Exports move in containers out of Oakland, and are trucked south to Los Angeles and Long Beach when space is tight. Almonds are dense, non-perishable and low in value per container, which makes them among the first cargoes dropped when carriers are short of boxes.

The structural risks are water, bees and concentration. Groundwater is being metered and capped, hive numbers depend on a beekeeping industry with problems of its own, and one February frost across the Central Valley would take out most of a world crop in a week.