Keith Jarrett wrote:

> Paul wrote,
> > Here is a graph showing how almond yields in California
> > have been steadily increasing in recent decades thanks,
> > in part, to industrialized agricultural practices:
> > http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/beea.jpg
>
> What is left out here is, the huge increase of bearing almond acres
> between 1990- 2007,  the yields have not increased all that much.
> That is a very misleading statement.

OK, Keith, I now see it was misleading for me to have simply said
 "almond yields" when I should have compared "Bearing
Acreage" vs "Yield Per Acre" to see how they both influence
the Total State Harvest.

I have now compiled a new chart* with all this information for the
period 1976-2005 including projections for the year 2007
http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/4af/almonde.jpg

As you can see, bearing acreage between 2007 (615,000 acres)
and 1990 (415,000 acres) is way up (48%) like you said, but yield
per acre is up even more dramatically:
2130 lbs/acre vs. 1250 lbs/acre = 70% increase.

And the increase in yield per acre influences the Total State
Harvest more strongly than the increase in bearing acreage.

Example:  In 2007 we have 615,000 bearing acres, but if we
had a 1990 level yield (1250 lbs/acre, the Total State Harvest
would be only 768,750,000 pounds instead of 1,310,000 pounds.

Conversely, in 1990 we had 415,000 bearing acres, but if we
had a 2007 level yield (2130 lbs/acre, it would give us a Total
State Harvest of 883,950,000 pounds.

Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.

*data compiled from the National Ag. Statistics Service,
Blue Diamond Growers and Almond Board of Calif. websites

******************************************************
* Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at:          *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm  *
******************************************************