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Monte Vista Farming Co

News & Events

I hope everyone had some good times with family and friends over the past few weeks, are feeling recharged and ready to get back to it! We’ve been discussing for some time that sales for the industry have been lethargic after such an incredible start, but also that we expect things to pick up soon. Several markets are very thin and will need to start buying. We saw a small flurry of activity last week and toward the beginning of this week, but we are expecting a lot more demand to start rolling in in the next week or two. In our opinion, many buyers have been holding off and waiting for the position report to be released (which happened this morning). I don’t know what other traders or buyers were expecting, but this report held no surprises for us.

As usual I’ll give my position report – bullet point summary below:

Receipts of 131.56M lbs in Dec brings our running total to 2.062B lbs. With the bulk of the crop received, we guess our final to fall between 2.11- and 2.14B lbs. (shouldn’t surprise anyone)

Shipments of 156M lbs are not a record, but it’s certainly close to one, and a very strong showing for December. These strong numbers were brought to you by the USA and EU (both markets saw records)

Committed (sold-unshipped) inventory remains a record for 3 of past 5 months at 497.68M lbs

New Sales were sort of “middle of the road” for December at 104M lbs

In summary, this report shows that the idea of a 2.05B crop is in the rear-view mirror (which could potentially show bearish tones) BUT the steady and strong shipments we continue to hold wipe out those bearish sentiments. We are plugging along right where we should be to move a crop this size. For our growers, we are approximately 60-65% sold for the year and will start to push that number closer to 75% by the time we have finished with bloom. Our expectation is that we will see a very active market in the coming weeks.

January Almond Report

Well, things have certainly changed since my last report where I was wondering where the buyers went. The position report released last month showed a few interesting things, but one stood out more than any other. Shipments were close to that of last year, which was interesting since it had to come mostly from the 2016 crop. Receipts were well below last year due to the delayed crop - which everyone expected - but what really stood out and surprised people were the committed sales.

Total of 677M lbs. committed as of the end of August

An increase of +168M lbs. shipped in August

Total Supply = 2.25B lbs., less than 2% loss and exempt = 2.205B lbs. (2% might not be enough this year)

Add the 400M lbs of carry-in to give us a 

We have sold 845M lbs. of total supply of 2.60B lbs, 

. Leaving us with basically the entire year to sell the 2/3 of the remaining crop.

As a buyer, I would be slightly alarmed by these numbers if I was not well covered. Many have entered the market at the same time as demand coming from every market segment. India, China, Mid-East, Domestic and Europe are all buying, however, I believe the United States and European Union - our largest and most stable markets - to be the most covered and the reason we are as far sold as we are.

As far as the crop is concerned, we continue to hear about higher than normal levels of serious damage. Many of the hardest hit growers tell me it was impossible to winter shake and destroy mummies due to the non-stop rainfall we received this year. Aside from the serious damage, we're seeing beautiful crops with nice color, and very low chip and scratch. Sizing on Nonpareil is approximately one size smaller than last year with fewer 20/22 and 22/24 and more 27/30 and 30/32. This is good news for our friends in Japan. With the increased in serious damage this year, we may see a higher than normal premium for high quality product such as J-spec due to the lack of availability.

We are selling into this rising market, limited somewhat by the speed of harvest, hulling and sizing. Recent Nonpareil sales to Japan and other high end markets are returning $3.00 to the grower. Inshell is even higher, between $3.05 - $3.10 back to the ranch.

September Almond Report

The almond market for this entire year; Summarized by watching YouTube videos of "Tesla Insane Mode Reactions"

What I was saying and thinking in July-October: 

We’re coming in into a record crop, but pricing and demand are in a good position. I recommend being aggressive on sales, moving inshell early to India and China and keeping EU full for holiday season. By the time we get to January, many of those markets will be full of product and looking ahead to a 2018 crop that will likely break records (based on increased acreage alone). Pricing should settle down a little in that time, but no dramatic price changes.



 The crop looks like it will be 100M lbs. more than I thought (I was at 2.20 for most of the year) but the extra lbs. almost don’t matter. We’ve had month after month of record shipments, strong sales and record commitments. This level of consumption hap propped up pricing and put most packers into a very comfortable sold position moving into bloom. The industry will probably be 70% sold by the end of Jan with the remaining 30% for the second half of the year (Feb-July).

Overall the industry is in great shape with very good and very stable pricing throughout the 2017 crop so far. Looking forward to the next position report on Friday that should show yet another very strong month in January.

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