The practices are working. Now we’re focusing on economics.

After five years of trialing soil health practices across 160 acres of almond orchards in the Southern San Joaquin Valley in California, including multi-species cover crops, sheep grazing, increased compost application, and nitrogen reduction, we can say with confidence that the practices work. When heavy rains fall, our cover-cropped fields absorb the water while neighboring fields flood. Soil that infiltrates faster holds more for the trees, with less running off, with real implications for irrigation efficiency and water use. The soil health indicators are showing early signs of carbon sequestration. Biodiversity is increasing.

The next challenge is equally important: building a financial case that works as well as the agronomic one. Until it does, the most promising practices in the world won't reach their potential.

For several consecutive years, commodity pricing sat below the cost of production. Some growers went bankrupt. Others sold land just to stay afloat. The market has shown signs of stabilizing as almond supply has contracted, and prices improved in 2025, but that recovery illustrates the deeper challenge rather than resolving it: profitability in this industry is tightly tied to year-to-year fluctuations that no individual farmer controls.

Input costs, water access, pollination reliability, weather, and global export dynamics all compound that instability. Downward pressure on commodity prices has intensified as more farmland shifts to ownership models that aren't tied to farming as a livelihood. Commodity markets move year to year, and that rhythm is fundamentally at odds with the long-term planning regenerative farming and long term sustainability planning requires.