April 2026 Position Report
Today was a busy news day in the almond industry. The highly anticipated 2026 USDA Subjective Forecast was released this morning and provided a total crop size of 2.7 billion pounds. Since the Almond Board of California voted to discontinue the Objective Estimate back in December of 2025, the 2.7 billion pound Subjective Forecast will be the industry’s official crop projection through the 2026 season. The ABC April Position Report was also released on Tuesday, May 12th, providing additional insight to further analyze the 2025 crop sales, shipments, and other dynamics that will drive the market going forward.
2025 Crop Receipts
There were 4 million pounds of receipts reported for the month of April. This brings our year-to-date total receipts to 2.69 billion pounds. As deliveries continue to wind down, the data is still trending toward a total crop size of 2.7 billion pounds.
Shipments
Total shipments for the month were 219.9 million pounds. This is 8.8% lower than April 2025. Export shipments came in at 167.3 million pounds, down 10.9% from last year. Domestic shipments were 52.6 million pounds, down 1.3% from last year. Year-to-date shipments total 200 billion pounds and currently trail last season’s shipments through April by 2.7%. Over the next three months, the industry will need to ship an average of 216 million pounds per month to match 2025’s total shipments. That will leave California with a carryout right around 500 million pounds.
Sales
New sales for the month of April were 160.7 million pounds, down from 192.5 million pounds last year. This puts the industry’s overall sold position at 80.3% based on a 2.7-billion-pound crop. Sales saw a bit of a dip this month, partly because we are getting to the time of the year where certain sizes and varieties are becoming unavailable. The other reason was that buyers and sellers were waiting to see what the Subjective Forecast would say. With no Objective Estimate this year, the impact and importance of the Subjective Forecast became much greater. Now that all the estimates have been released, we should see a nice stable market through the end of the year.
2026 Crop Estimates
Bountiful – 2.72B
Terra Nova Trading – 2.66B
Famoso/Wonderful – 2.64B
Blue Diamond Growers – 2.69B
USDA Subjective – 2.70B
Market Summary
When the reports came out this morning there was a lot of initial excitement and good feedback about the 2.7B Subjective Forecast. The funny thing is that 2.7B isn’t a number that’s going to make almond prices go way up; 2.7B is right in line with the various independent estimates and industry expectations. The excitement was more a sense of relief that we didn’t get some huge unrealistic number that would tank the market. I guess that goes to show how accustomed we have gotten to bad news over the last few years.
Overall, the facts and figures in the Subjective Forecast and April Position Report were pretty neutral, but they laid a good foundation that should lead to consistent sales and shipments through the end of the season.
As we mentioned on our last podcast, Kevin Souza is currently with most of the buyers and sellers at an industry event in Macao, China. He will be making the rounds over the next day or two, and we will follow up with a podcast later this week to update everyone on how the industry is reacting to these reports.
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