One Billion Pound Pistachio Crop Is Expected This Year

This growing season for US pistachios including California, Arizona and New Mexico should yield the highest crop ever. Talking about that big crop is Richard Matoian is the Executive Director of American Pistachio Growers, based in Fresno.

“We are expecting our largest crop and we plan to hit that billion-pound mark, which has been a ceiling or a barrier that we haven't been able to surpass, but we have enough acres, enough bearing acres to be able to produce that and we strongly believe that we have markets for our product all around the world to take up that particular supply,” Matoian said.

“For most agricultural commodities, supplying demand is a real critical factor,” noted Matoian. High supply usually means that price is going to go down and then low supply means the price is going to go up. “We're very fortunate in pistachios to have both high supply and good returns to growers,” he said.

Matoian added that even the wholesale prices in the industry are good. “Pricing on the wholesale level has gone up about 80 cents per pound from last year. So that's a very strong indication that there is strong demand around the world for our product,” Matoian noted.