Make sure that all your names line up on contract and subcontract with your other business interests (trust name, partnership name, exact corporate name) or other legal purposes. Most often, crop insurance companies will require your statements (including the names and acreage of each subcontract) to correspond exactly with what is detailed in the policy. Orchard Removals Planning for orchard removals and replanting occurs year- round, and right after harvest is the best time to let us know if an orchard that was harvested in 2024 will be pulled and going out of production for 2025. Be sure to let your regional manager know of any acreage changes such as pullouts, orchard sales, or ownership transfers sooner rather than later. Most importantly, this helps Blue Diamond keep our current acreage basis straight. Better to let us know now! If you plan on replanting but haven’t figured out what variety or exactly when you’ll replant, no problem. We can list that subcontract as an unknown variety and put in a tentative replant date that we can track and update later. Set an Appointment with your PCA/CCA Having a meeting right after harvest with your PCA is arguably the most important step you can take to “Begin with the end in mind,” or in terms of harvest, end with the beginning in mind . Your grade results will have a direct impact on planning implications for the next crop cycle. Gather your statements, or pull a “Variety by Grade Summary” report from the Portal, in order to provide all the data you need to have that conversation. If your grades for 2024 looked great, congratulations! What you did last year was effective and you should use that as the basis for your IPM plan again next year. You could also look for opportunities to fine tune your IPM program and be ready for emerging pest threats in the coming season. If some of your grades didn’t look good or you had greater challenges in 2024 than in prior years, you are not alone. Although overall rejects are coming in lower in 2024 than 2023, they are still higher than any other prior year in recent history, including what we referred to as the “Wreck” in 2017. A key factor this year is the damage caused by the plant bug complex on top of high navel orangeworm pressures. Added to that, many growers saw damage from the emerging pest,
Sample Breakdown Test for Rejects
Brown Spot
45.71%
Beetle
11.43%
Orange Worm 40.00%
Mold
2.86%
the Carpophilus truncatus beetle. This combined pressure has driven reject values higher than what many growers experience with navel orangeworm alone. The focus on your statements should not just be on the total reject percentage, but on any reject breakdowns that were performed this year. We have made a major push to bring awareness to the value of having at least one reject breakdown performed on each orchard. This gives you the fractional breakdown of the total reject damage and list the proportional impact of each type of pest ( as illustrated in figure 1 ). If you did not request a reject breakdown and would still like to get the information, you can request a retest that is “information only” which will not affect your grade. Our regional managers are available to support this process as well. We often meet jointly with member- growers and their PCAs to provide our perspective. These services are just one reason why Blue Diamond ’s member- growers produce the highest quality almonds, leading to higher grower returns. (Figure 1) The reject breakdown will show the proportions of damage that occurred by each causal pest. In this case, the overall total reject percentage “Reject meats” was 3.5% (not shown here as it appears on the main line of the statement) and each percent listed is a fractional percent of the overall 3.5%.
Ben Goudie, Director, Member Relations, Blue Diamond Growers
25
SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2024
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