Business
After years of rapid growth, California's almond industry struggles amid low prices
For much of the last decade, almonds have been such a lucrative crop that growers and investment firms have poured money into planting new orchards across vast stretches of California farmland.
Now, the almond boom has fizzled and the industry has entered a slump. Prices have dropped over the last several years, and the state’s total almond acreage has started to decrease as growers have begun to tear out orchards and plant other crops.
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In a sign of the troubles besetting the industry, one large almond-growing conglomerate has declared bankruptcy.
In a series of Chapter 11 filings in federal bankruptcy court, Trinitas Farming and other affiliated companies said that record-low almond prices and high interest rates contributed to their “serious liquidity constraints.”
The group of companies said in a court document filed Feb. 19 that they own 7,856 acres of almond orchards in five counties, including Solano, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Fresno and Tulare. As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, these orchards are expected to be put up for sale.
“When the price is low, now we start seeing the results of it. And certainly the fear is that Trinitas is the tip of the iceberg,” said Jake Wenger, general manager of the Salida Hulling Assn., which runs an almond-hulling plant in Modesto.
Prices for premium almonds have dropped from nearly $4 a pound a decade ago to about $2 a pound or less, Wenger said. Though the low prices are affecting all growers, those that are being hit especially hard are the many investor groups that bought land when prices were high and now have large debts, he said.
“The question becomes, do some of these banks call on some of these loans? And that’s really going to be a concern for a lot of people in the industry,” Wenger said. “Nobody got more indebted to the banks than a lot of these investor groups.”
A highway in Buttonwillow, Calif., bisects Kern County growing fields, with a large almond orchard on the left.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The group that filed for bankruptcy includes Trinitas Advantaged Agriculture Partners IV, LP, an investment fund that was formed and managed by Redwood City-based Trinitas Partners, a private equity investment company. It also includes the investment fund’s subsidiary Trinitas Farming, based in Oakdale, and 17 other subsidiaries.
The group’s lawyers said in court documents that the investment fund was organized by Trinitas Partners in 2015 to develop and operate almond farms in the Central Valley. It said the companies were ”well-positioned to become profitable ventures” but that they were ultimately “unable to raise necessary capital” through investments or from potential sales of assets. The entities’ reported debts total approximately $180 million.
Trinitas Partners itself was not among the companies that filed for bankruptcy. Representatives of the companies did not respond to requests for comments about the matter.
“I really firmly believe they’re not going to be the only ones facing financial struggles,” Wenger said.
The low prices appear to be making it difficult for some investments to pencil out. Wenger and others in the almond business have noticed some orchards abandoned in parts of the Central Valley over the last year, with rows of unkempt trees now filled with weeds.
“We’re already seeing people walk away,” Wenger said.
He said he believes almond prices will eventually rebound, but it’s not clear when that turnaround might come.
“I certainly don’t think we’ve seen the worst of it yet,” Wenger said.
While various factors have contributed to the situation, Wenger and others say some of the issues weighing on prices include an oversupply of almonds after years of rapid growth.
A grower examines a cluster of almonds in a Manteca, Calif., orchard in June 2022.
(Paul Kuroda / For The Times)
California produces about 80% of the world’s supply of almonds. And according to federal data, the state’s harvested almond orchards skyrocketed from 760,000 acres in 2011 to more than 1.3 million acres in 2022.
In the last two years, though, annual mapping of orchards has shown that California’s total almond acreage has started to decline.
Over the last decade, the almond boom coincided with growing concerns about water in California. When growers and investment companies bought land and drilled wells to pump groundwater in the Central Valley, the expanding nut orchards locked in long-term water demands and added to the strains on the state’s declining aquifers.
Wenger said he thinks it’s possible that if some of these orchards come out of production, groundwater levels could rise in places.
“It depends on what cropping patterns come in, and what happens next,” he said. “But it does have a potential that we could see benefits to groundwater.”
Critics who have questioned the amount of water dedicated to growing almonds include Bill Maher, who recently drew laughs on his show when he urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to “take on Big Almond.”
The environmental group Food and Water Watch has also urged the state to limit the expansion of almond orchards and other water-intensive crops such as alfalfa. Chirag Bhakta, the group’s California director, said the expansion of almonds has “locked us into a situation where we’re growing way too many of these thirsty tree nuts in parts of California,” adding to the problems of overpumping of groundwater.
Bhakta said it’s hard to know if the bankruptcy case points to more trouble ahead in the industry. But he said it represents an “opportunity for us to shift what’s been grown on that land to actually reflect what’s best for California” and the state’s water needs.
Representatives of the almond industry have defended the crop’s water use, pointing to agricultural statistics showing almonds cover 21% of irrigated agricultural land in California but account for 14% of agricultural water use. They have also noted that in addition to the nuts, almond hulls are used for cattle feed.
In the coming years, California’s agriculture industry will face water limits under the requirements of the state’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. The law requires local agencies in many areas to develop plans to curb overpumping by 2040.
Researchers with the Public Policy Institute of California have estimated that addressing the groundwater deficit in the San Joaquin Valley will probably require taking at least half a million acres of farmland out of production, and they’ve called for expanding efforts to help convert farmland to other uses, such as solar development or habitat areas.
Aside from water constraints, the almond industry has faced other challenges, including tariffs in China and other countries, as well as shipping bottlenecks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There has just been a glut in the almond market for a couple of years now,” said Caity Peterson, associate director of the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center.
“It’s possible that we have hit peak almond,” Peterson said. “The industry will probably right-size itself to where the supply better meets the demand and it’s not oversupply, like we’ve got right now.”
Some experts say the almond industry is likely to bounce back. Analysts with Rabobank wrote in an analysis this month that “a strong rebound in almond prices is expected over the next 12 to 18 months.”
International markets have a big influence. According to the most recent crop data for the 12 months that ended in July 2023, 72% of the state’s almonds were exported, while 28% were sold domestically.
California’s total almond acreage has gone down the last two years mostly because of decreases in new plantings, said Rick Kushman, a spokesperson for the Almond Board of California.
“Orchards last about 25 years, then growers replant, if they decide to. It’s possible that financing has been harder to get and it is surely more expensive right now,” Kushman said in an email. “Shipments have been strong in recent months, but we are a long way from seeing if that will affect planting decisions.”
There are roughly 7,600 almond farms in the state, and about 70% of the state’s orchards are under 100 acres, according to the Almond Board of California.
Wenger said those who are better suited to weather this sort of downturn are family-run businesses that own their land debt-free.
Almond growers aren’t the only ones in agriculture who have been dealing with tough economic conditions.
“Walnut prices are terrible. Grape prices are terrible,” Wenger said. “Pistachios are not doing great. So we have all these crops that are starting to suffer.”
The fall of the Trinitas almond business follows the recent news that the large fruit grower Prima Wawona also filed for bankruptcy.
Some growers in the San Joaquin Valley have chosen to replace almond trees with pistachio orchards.
Blossoms fill an almond tree branch in an orchard near Sanger. California produces about 80% of the world’s supply of almonds.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Still, most of California’s almond orchards remain, and almond trees have been blooming with white and pink flowers in the Central Valley.
“Agriculture in general is seeing some very difficult times,” said Bill Lyons, a farmer in Stanislaus County who once served as state agriculture secretary under Gov. Gray Davis.
On his family’s century-old ranch, they have a cattle operation and grow a wide variety of crops.
“We’ve been in the almond business for over 25 years, and we’re seeing unprecedented low prices for multiple years, and very high expenses,” Lyons said. “And when you combine the two, it’s extremely difficult for any almond farmer to make a profitable living.”
He said where some landowners have abandoned their trees, it’s a problem for neighboring growers because the untended orchards can harbor pests — such as navel orangeworm — that can spread to nearby orchards.
Lyons said his family plans to keep growing almonds.
“Hopefully, the almond price will gain momentum,” Lyons said. “I have confidence in the almond industry, but it’s definitely going to be a serious bump in the road as we travel through to next year or so.”
Times staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
SpaceX stock dropped below its initial public offering price for the first time on Wednesday, signaling dwindling hype around the Elon Musk company.
Shares dipped below their IPO price of $135 on Wednesday morning for the first time since listing, a humbling loss for the stock, which had skyrocketed more than 50% in its first days of trading last month.
The shares regained some ground later in the day, closing at $135.27.
The initial offering gave the company a market cap of $2.2 trillion, making it one of the world’s most valuable public companies. For a short period, the IPO also made owner Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, though his net worth now is about $800 billion.
On July 7, the company was added to the Nasdaq-100 after a rule change allowed companies to join 15 days after their IPOs.
SpaceX raised a total of $86 billion after underwriters exercised their right to sell additional shares, on top of the $75 billion initially raised. It was the largest IPO in history.
SpaceX, based near Austin, Texas, is the leading launch services company in the world, with its Falcon 9 rocket accounting for the vast majority of satellites launched last year.
It is also the leading satellite-based broadband provider with its Starlink service. The extraordinary interest in the IPO was driven by Musk’s plans to make the company an AI leader — including plans to launch orbiting satellite data centers powered by the sun that crunch AI data.
The company’s headquarters moved from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024, but it retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Since the IPO, SpaceX has used its newfound wealth to expand in the AI space.
It announced last month that it was acquiring the AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion, with the deal expected to close in the third quarter. The San Francisco company, founded in 2022, enables engineers to instruct software in English to run coding tasks autonomously.
Musk also merged his xAI artificial intelligence company into SpaceX earlier this year. The combined entity recently announced it was leasing computing power to rivals Anthropic and Google at two terrestrial data centers it has constructed.
Since the IPO, investors have expressed concerns about the company’s spending plans and debt load.
Even with the volatility of the last month, there’s still more uncertainty to come.
The stock could fall further as locked-up shares held by current and former employees are released.
At least 20% of the shares will be released after second-quarter results are disclosed sometime in the coming months, with all the lockups expiring in December.
But Space X isn’t the only megacap stock to experience ups and downs early on.
Shares of Meta, then named Facebook, fell significantly below the IPO price of $38 before recovering. After its May 2012 launch, shares plummeted by nearly 50% and hit a record low of $19.69 in August 2012.
The company took more than 14 months to rebound, finally surpassing its $38 IPO price in July 2013.
In the latest lawsuit against Paramount Skydance, a corporate shareholder has alleged corruption at the highest levels of the company, which is battling to complete its $111-billion takeover of rival Warner Bros. Discovery to create a new media behemoth.
Controlling shareholders Larry Ellison and his son David have presided over a firm that allegedly made “illegal promises and payments to secure regulatory approval,” for the Ellison family’s Paramount purchase last summer, according to the shareholder lawsuit filed this week in Delaware court.
Larry Ellison allegedly discussed with President Trump how Paramount’s pending Warner Bros. acquisition would result in a shake-up at CNN, states the lawsuit filed by Paramount shareholder Paul Robbins.
“The Ellisons [won] the bidding war for Warner Bros. by promising sweeping changes at CNN and other personal benefits to President Trump,” according to the 59-page complaint.
The case was brought on Robbins’ behalf by the nonprofit Public Integrity Project and the advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has been critical of the Trump administration‘s policies toward the media.
The complaint noted that Netflix withdrew from the bidding in February — the same day Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met at the White House with then-Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and another top official.
The lawsuit suggests Netflix dropped out after recognizing the challenges of dealing with the Trump administration and that Trump always wanted to see the prize go to Paramount because of his close ties to the Ellison family, who have ushered in more favorable news coverage of Trump and the departure of late-night comedian Stephen Colbert.
Robbins does not appear to have firsthand accounts supporting his claims, which are based on public documents and media reports about dealings between the Ellisons and Trump. He has owned Paramount stock since 2021, but the lawsuit does not say how many shares he owns.
He could not be reached for comment.
Paramount, in a statement, pushed back against his claims, saying the “lawsuit recycles allegations that have already been reported and already addressed.”
“As we’ve said consistently: No commitments from either David or Larry Ellison have been made to any government body, state AG or federal agency regarding the future of CNN or any other news property, other than the goal to deliver truth-based journalism,” Paramount said.
It’s the third lawsuit lobbed at Paramount this week. On Monday, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta led a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general that filed a federal antitrust lawsuit seeking to block the Paramount-Warner merger due to concerns about consolidation in movie distribution and cable channels.
The Writers Guild of America added another antitrust lawsuit against Paramount on Tuesday, alleging the massive merger would result in fewer jobs and lower pay for writers.
Many in Hollywood are opposed to the deal due to fears that another studio consolidation would bring more layoffs, programming cutbacks and a fragile business environment due to the heavy debt burden — nearly $80 billion — that Paramount would have to take on to buy Warner Bros.
The shareholder lawsuit noted that Paramount participated in a raucous event with UFC fighters on the White House lawn in June to celebrate Trump’s 80th birthday and the nation’s 250th anniversary. Paramount has UFC broadcast rights.
The event came two days after Trump’s Justice Department wrapped its regulatory review of Paramount’s Warner Bros. proposal, giving the merger a key green light.
Justice Department investigators reportedly did not have a chance to express potential antitrust concerns when high-level Justice Department officials closed the inquiry — a major win for Paramount and the Ellisons, the lawsuit states.
“There have been some line attorneys in the DOJ that have reviewed this [merger] and have some concerns,” New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James said Tuesday during a virtual town hall with opponents of the merger. “Their analysis of this particular case was ignored by the front office, if you will, at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. [the White House] That’s the front office.”
Ellison’s Skydance Media emerged with its deal to buy Paramount two years ago. Previous controlling shareholder Shari Redstone was desperate for an exit and Trump was mounting his White House comeback by battling then-President Biden, then Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump declined an invitation to appear on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” then under Redstone control. He became infuriated by an October 2024 interview with Harris on “60 Minutes.”
Trump filed a $10-billion lawsuit against CBS (he later upped it to $20 billion). After Trump won the election, he had considerable sway over Paramount because it needed his administration’s approval for the sale to the Ellisons.
Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to end his “60 Minutes” lawsuit, allowing the sale to go forward. The Ellisons acquired Paramount in August, then set their sights on Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
“The Ellisons proceeded to remake CBS in the President’s image, bought properties he enjoyed, and even hosted events to honor him,” the lawsuit said. “This helped the Ellisons, but it appears to have hurt Paramount and its media outlets.”
On Wednesday, Paramount said Ellison and other high-level executives had dealings with administration officials but “throughout … the review of the proposed acquisition of Paramount, Skydance has fully complied with all applicable laws, including our nation’s anti-bribery laws.”
In late April, David Ellison hosted an elaborate dinner in Washington to honor the “Trump White House,” according to invitations to the event, “even though President Trump continually insulted journalists at CBS and elsewhere,” the lawsuit said.
On Wednesday, during a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) blasted acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche for his attendance at the dinner while his agency was reviewing the Paramount deal.
Also on Wednesday, the nonprofit news site ProPublica reported Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has accepted $63,000 in free tickets from CBS in recent years — while Paramount mergers were pending.
Times staff writer Ben Wieder contributed to this report.
Grocery Outlet is opening new locations across California, rebuilding its network in the Golden State after closing stores early this year.
A new branch in Ontario Ranch is scheduled to open July 23, and more openings are planned for later this summer.
The location will be operated by independent owners Gloria and Jason Pineda. By the end of August, the discount grocery retailer plans to open stores in Ramona, San Francisco, Clovis and Petaluma as well.
The Emeryville, Calif.-based chain announced the closure of 36 stores in March, including nine California locations. The closures were an attempt to roll back an overexpansion in the wrong markets, resulting in a loss in 2025. Grocery Outlet did not announce which locations would be closed at the time, but they were listed for sublease by advisory firm Gordon Bros.
Among those listed was an Ontario location closer than seven miles from the soon-to-open site.
Five other Southern California locations were marked for closing in Azusa, Brawley, El Cajon, La Habra, Ontario and Poway. In Central California, the Kerman, Patterson and Ridgecrest stores were also listed for sublease. Outside of California, stores in Idaho, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania also were listed.
In an earnings call in May, Grocery Outlet Chief Executive Jason Potter said the restructuring was helping boost the company’s profit.
“These closures are now complete and have improved fleet quality and will strengthen the earnings profile of the business over time,” he said.
Grocery Outlet was founded in San Francisco in 1946 as a discount grocery store chain selling overstock of limited-time or holiday food items. There are about 280 Grocery Outlet locations in California, accounting for more than half of its total store count.
Though Grocery Outlet has cultivated a dedicated consumer base on TikTok and other social media posts from grocery bargain hunters, it faces fierce competition from other budget grocery chains, including Aldi, which is set to open 180 stores in 2026. It also competes with Trader Joe’s, Walmart and Amazon, which have steadily gained customers.
Last year it was also hurt by the lapse in federal food assistance during the 43-day government shutdown.
In the wake of rising grocery prices and economic anxiety, some low-income customers who would once have shopped at budget grocery chains such as Grocery Outlet are turning to food banks instead. According to Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, 1.2 million people visit its food banks per month.
Grocery Outlet’s net sales rose 4% in the first quarter from a year earlier to $1.17 billion. It recorded a net loss of $180 million for the period.
It said it had closed locations as part of its optimization plan. It also underwent a store refresh program, changing products and is clustering locations to boost profit and customer traffic.
“Our value-oriented product offering continues to resonate with consumers. While we’re encouraged by the progress we’re beginning to see, we’re not satisfied with our current level of performance and are focused on the work we have in front of us,” Potter said on the earnings call.
Grocery Outlet shares have fallen more than 25% over the last 12 months. The Dow Jones industrial average has climbed more than 15% during the same period.
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