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Paramount Farms touts record pistachio return, future
Though the billion-pound crop is an ever-moving target, Zion remains confident in two things: the American pistachio industry will reach that milestone sooner than later, and global buyers will consume the additional production.
Still, Zion jokes that the pistachio industry has a poor record of predicting crops.
“Of all the things we do well we’re not good at predicting crops,” Zion told pistachio growers at the American Pistachio Growers annual meeting in February.
Speaking to the rural appraisers and farm managers, Zion said, "Last year at one point we thought we were going to have a 400 million pound crop and we ended up at 519 million pounds, the third largest crop we’ve ever seen.
Customers are already asking Zion for his estimate on the 2015 crop size. He simply tells them it could be anywhere from 400-700 million pounds.
