Supplies of pistachios are down approximately 20 percent this year--the first crop year since 2018 to not have a record-breaking crop year. “Initially the 2022 crop was expected to be an on-year but it ended up being an off-year,” says Richard Matoian, president of the American Pistachio Growers. “That’s probably because 2020 and 2021 both produced record crops consecutively and we think the trees needed a rest. We had about 20 percent less production than originally expected.”

While the harvest started slightly earlier this year, the tremendous summer heat California saw last year did cause the trees to shut down. “So while there was harvest early, there were a lot of orchards that had to wait to be harvested because the fruit wasn’t ripe enough,” he says. In addition, there were a lot of nuts sticking to the trees because of that lack of ripening so while growers generally do two shakes of trees to remove the nuts, many went in for a third shake to get the last fruit off the trees.

Source - https://www.freshplaza.com