What is a "DOV style" vineyard?  Also do you only do grapes (raisins) or do you double-crop anything?

Our homestead is not quite complete, but I am considering a small portion of beauty-berries along with my planned orchard at this point.  They are abundant and wild out here and make a great jelly, juice or even wine.  Of course, I won't be growing/harvesting for a living, more of a "hobby farm" kind of deal.  Perhaps when I retire from my "real" job I might venture into more, but right now my focus is on trees and cattle (I have a few head grazing a portion of the property).

DOV is Dried-On-Vine. There's different styles but it looks like this:

https://twitter.com/julioepb/status/6978...25696?s=19

Normally, when the crop ripens you pick the fruit and lay them down on paper trays to dry in the sun. Like this (all though that field is oriented wrong)

https://twitter.com/BiolaRaisin/status/1...12611?s=19

Traditional raisins are a little unique in that you grow the crop, but then at harvest instead of just picking it off and sending it in, you have to dry the crop, and the grower takes in all the risk in that process. When they're on the trays, ANY moisture introduced will induce mold, sometimes insects get into them, or lately the smoke stops the solar radiation from being able to dry them and they might start to ferment. Quite a lot can go wrong. But if you get it right, you'll make more. 

DOV takes a lot of that out of the equation by allowing the fruit to dry suspended in air - the moisture problem especially. In the Tweet above, they cut the fruiting canes to stop water flow to the fruit. You can see the dead leaves already and the fruit is yellowing. The tradeoff is it takes a very dangerous 3 week and substitutes it for a longer 8-10 week period and the problem then becomes can you get it done before the temps start dipping into the low 80s. 

All in all though, much less risky, and that style of vine and trellis will produce a heavier crop to boot. Then to top that off it's more easy to mechanize the harvest process. Pretty win-win. 

And no not only grapes. I actually have more almonds than grapes now but my heart's much closer to the vineyard. My brothers grow different things too, mandarins, pistachios, cherries. A little wheat. I'm the only one dumb/stubborn enough to stick with raisins lol.

How easy is it to switch to a different crop?  I’m sure there are “players” that have a quota or so for different buyers.  Or something of the sorts.  Can you switch up the field and sell other crops easily or are you stuck short term on the grapes/raisins? 

You make it sound easy, but the transition to DOV Seems to be easy enough?? No? You’ve stated the risks.  Maybe try a percentage one year and see how it goes before fully going all in?

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When you take your truck in for an oil change and tire rotation and you literally can't leave because your ignition cylinder takes a dump and your truck can't start. At least it happened there and not some country back road leaving me stranded while waiting for AAA to tow me. 

This is why we have emergency savings because that cost was definitely not planned and couldn't have come at a worse time. Our quarterly insurance as well as annual registration and inspection for our vehicles is September/October as well as property tax for some land we own. Lots of money going out in a short period of time. It's all budgeted for, but an unexpected expense costing several hundred dollars would have screwed us big time if not for emergency savings.

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When you take your truck in for an oil change and tire rotation and you literally can't leave because your ignition cylinder takes a dump and your truck can't start. At least it happened there and not some country back road leaving me stranded while waiting for AAA to tow me. 

This is why we have emergency savings because that cost was definitely not planned and couldn't have come at a worse time. Our quarterly insurance as well as annual registration and inspection for our vehicles is September/October as well as property tax for some land we own. Lots of money going out in a short period of time. It's all budgeted for, but an unexpected expense costing several hundred dollars would have screwed us big time if not for emergency  

There’s a simple fix For dat.  

---

DOV is Dried-On-Vine. There's different styles but it looks like this:

https://twitter.com/julioepb/status/6978...25696?s=19

Normally, when the crop ripens you pick the fruit and lay them down on paper trays to dry in the sun. Like this (all though that field is oriented wrong)

https://twitter.com/BiolaRaisin/status/1...12611?s=19

Traditional raisins are a little unique in that you grow the crop, but then at harvest instead of just picking it off and sending it in, you have to dry the crop, and the grower takes in all the risk in that process. When they're on the trays, ANY moisture introduced will induce mold, sometimes insects get into them, or lately the smoke stops the solar radiation from being able to dry them and they might start to ferment. Quite a lot can go wrong. But if you get it right, you'll make more. 

DOV takes a lot of that out of the equation by allowing the fruit to dry suspended in air - the moisture problem especially. In the Tweet above, they cut the fruiting canes to stop water flow to the fruit. You can see the dead leaves already and the fruit is yellowing. The tradeoff is it takes a very dangerous 3 week and substitutes it for a longer 8-10 week period and the problem then becomes can you get it done before the temps start dipping into the low 80s. 

All in all though, much less risky, and that style of vine and trellis will produce a heavier crop to boot. Then to top that off it's more easy to mechanize the harvest process. Pretty win-win. 

And no not only grapes. I actually have more almonds than grapes now but my heart's much closer to the vineyard. My brothers grow different things too, mandarins, pistachios, cherries. A little wheat. I'm the only one dumb/stubborn enough to stick with raisins lol.

How easy is it to switch to a different crop?  I’m sure there are “players” that have a quota or so for different buyers.  Or something of the sorts.  Can you switch up the field and sell other crops easily or are you stuck short term on the grapes/raisins? 

You make it sound easy, but the transition to DOV Seems to be easy enough?? No? You’ve stated the risks.  Maybe try a percentage one year and see how it goes before fully going all in?

Asking the tough questions Jags haha, you have keen insight. I could go into all this better over a few beers but I'll do my best here. 

It's easy to switch crops, but it isn't cheap. That's the number 1 hindrance for a grower of my size. You'd be stopping all your revenue (tearing your field out with a bulldozer) and paying a significant amount to replant the whole field. Then you'll be waiting 3-4 years for any permanent crop to develop enough to even break even on a harvest. That overhead vineyard in the first tweet up there runs about 12k per acre to plant for instance. Then you'll spend a out 1.5k per acre each year to grow them. 

So let's say you replant a 40 acre vineyard block. You'll spend something like $750,000 before you ever make a dime back. 

On the other side of the problem is you need someone to buy your crop. If you have almonds, buyers will fight over you. Other stuff can be dicey. Where I sell raisins I'm a cooperative member, so they can't really get rid of me. That's a another big issue for growers my size, and a large reason why I'll probably stay in raisins of some form. Sometimes people don't have a permanent home, and every year you have to negotiate a cash contract with a buyer. Some years when there is abundant supply you can probably guess how that goes for a small grower. 

As to your last few questions, what makes the DOV possible is the development of a handful of early ripening vine species over the last 30 years or so. Most vineyard here are Thompson Seedless variety and they don't build proper sugar until about Labor Day. At that point you have about 30 days to dry the fruit naturally before it gets too cold. Much too short for doing DOV, which needs something like 80 days. 

So for me, I'll have to replant to new vines, and if I'm doing the vines it makes sense to do a different trellis system at the same time. I have the vines picked out, but I'm a little hung up on two different trellis styles I like, the single high wire or an open gable. The each have different advantages, but neither exist yet with the particular vine species I've picked out so I don't really have much prior knowledge to lean on. Just gonna wing it lol. 

Btw, you were also onto something by saying do a percentage, the open gable style trellis would allow me to keep the same spacing and I'd absolutely replace the fields in thirds. 

Anyway, there's probably a little more to it but I didn't wanna write a full page, anything else you're curious about lmk.

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

He hitches up the wagon and drags it down under the Buckman Bridge to sell to the Swells.

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“An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers.”. - Plato

How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

He hitches up the wagon and drags it down under the Buckman Bridge to sell to the Swells.

And don’t try to undersell him and his crew, either.

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

It helps to be the only U-Pick hemp farm in the county.

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When you get into the endzone, act like you've been there before.

How easy is it to switch to a different crop?  I’m sure there are “players” that have a quota or so for different buyers.  Or something of the sorts.  Can you switch up the field and sell other crops easily or are you stuck short term on the grapes/raisins? 

You make it sound easy, but the transition to DOV Seems to be easy enough?? No? You’ve stated the risks.  Maybe try a percentage one year and see how it goes before fully going all in?

Asking the tough questions Jags haha, you have keen insight. I could go into all this better over a few beers but I'll do my best here. 

It's easy to switch crops, but it isn't cheap. That's the number 1 hindrance for a grower of my size. You'd be stopping all your revenue (tearing your field out with a bulldozer) and paying a significant amount to replant the whole field. Then you'll be waiting 3-4 years for any permanent crop to develop enough to even break even on a harvest. That overhead vineyard in the first tweet up there runs about 12k per acre to plant for instance. Then you'll spend a out 1.5k per acre each year to grow them. 

So let's say you replant a 40 acre vineyard block. You'll spend something like $750,000 before you ever make a dime back. 

On the other side of the problem is you need someone to buy your crop. If you have almonds, buyers will fight over you. Other stuff can be dicey. Where I sell raisins I'm a cooperative member, so they can't really get rid of me. That's a another big issue for growers my size, and a large reason why I'll probably stay in raisins of some form. Sometimes people don't have a permanent home, and every year you have to negotiate a cash contract with a buyer. Some years when there is abundant supply you can probably guess how that goes for a small grower. 

As to your last few questions, what makes the DOV possible is the development of a handful of early ripening vine species over the last 30 years or so. Most vineyard here are Thompson Seedless variety and they don't build proper sugar until about Labor Day. At that point you have about 30 days to dry the fruit naturally before it gets too cold. Much too short for doing DOV, which needs something like 80 days. 

So for me, I'll have to replant to new vines, and if I'm doing the vines it makes sense to do a different trellis system at the same time. I have the vines picked out, but I'm a little hung up on two different trellis styles I like, the single high wire or an open gable. The each have different advantages, but neither exist yet with the particular vine species I've picked out so I don't really have much prior knowledge to lean on. Just gonna wing it lol. 

Btw, you were also onto something by saying do a percentage, the open gable style trellis would allow me to keep the same spacing and I'd absolutely replace the fields in thirds. 

Anyway, there's probably a little more to it but I didn't wanna write a full page, anything else you're curious about lmk.

To the bolded,    Give me another 6 years on the board and I might be able to come up with another good question.  Haha.  


Thanks for the reply.  I think I’ve mentioned before, but I’m fascinated by people with careers like you.  It may not even be in agriculture. Like crabbers, those guys too.  So much knowledge to need/have and money to put into it just to have other factors out of your control make or break a season.  Weather, prices for the product, etc. not only that, you’re doing something that some of us are interested/curious about (even if it’s on a much smaller scale to become less dependent on grocery stores and to try to get to “off the grid” status.). But you do it on a much bigger scale, and for a living.  I think it’s cool as [BLEEP].  If I ever come up with another intelligent question, I’m definitely gonna bug you about it! 

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

I too am curious.  Not only that, but do the buyers “expect” a certain poundage or quantity.  And if the total isn’t met, are there repercussions?  Or are the buyers the “big boys” and will buy as much as they can from their sources?  Like a good year for raisins, does Sun Maid box more? Or do they buy what they expect to sell based off their projections leaving some farmers with a [BLEEP] ton of raisins and no where to move them?

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

Everything's a little different. I think I mentioned above, almond processors will compete for you. Many of them, including the place I went with, The Almond Company, will pay for your trees when you plant if you sign an 8-10 year contract to sell to them. 

Bulk wine processors, which was my thing for my first half dozen years, are shady cartels that price-fix, and will drop you the second they can get cheaper juice from say South America or whatever. Also why I've mentioned on this board a few times, I often do better when the dollar is weaker. Really, if I could do anything I would've stayed producing wine but it's just way too monopolized. 

Raisins, I walked into a local processor when I noticed the raisin price eclipse the green price, basically a guy that knew me by family name, and I just told him I'd like to try to make raisins. Easy as that, signed yearly contracts for about 4 years with him. Also, a unique feature of Thompson Seedless grapes, you can choose to grow for table grapes, bulk wine, or raisins and kinda sorta just choose at the end of the season based on price, which of course the processors do their best to hide from you lol. 

That local raisin processor ended up out of business a few years later, and stemming from some of that stuff I moved on to SunMaid Raisins. If anyone's ever bought raisins before, you've probably seen the red box with the girl on the front. They are a little unique in that they're grower-owned. I think again I just walked in, asked if I could sell to them, they came to look at my field, looked at some of my past USDA grading and said yes. I think I sold on a year to year basis with them for 5 years and they offered me a full membership a few years ago, meaning I now have a permanent home and a (very small) part owner in the company.

Outside of my own experience, I think pistachios are a lot like almonds, processors will gladly take all you can offer them. They all incentivize things, free trees or they pay for your hauling and you probably just take the best offer, or maybe someone has a better pay structure or something like that. Tree fruits, citrus, and fresh market stuff gets a little tougher and you might need to know a guy, have a family member already producing with a processor, stuff like that. A who do you know type of thing.

Real wine grapes are the toughest of all. You will contract directly with a winery, and you'll have to offer some type of advantage over a lot 
of competition. Or start your own winery I guess. 

Anyway, that's kinda my experience with things as a small small grower but there's really no rules. You can get as gangster as you want, and people do. 

I know guys that will calculate the ROI over the 20 year life of an almond ranch, go to the biggest local business they can find and promise such and such return if you give me x amount of capitol and boom away they go with a 1000 acre ranch and the most baller Ford pickup there is. 

Some guys find good land deals, will buy the land and plant something like cherries, then turn around and sell half the interest to a cherry packer to make sure they're married in basically. Now that packer has a personal interest in selling that guys crop. 

The real big dogs do the shadiest crap and that stuff usually has to do with water deals. Selling farm water to real estate developers and stuff like that. Real dirty stuff.

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

It helps to be the only U-Pick hemp farm in the county.

I started raising investors to plant hemp a few years back but quickly realized that industry was going into over supply rapidly. Chicken hearted it lol. 

Bigger and smarter guys than me lost a lot of money. There's not enough infastructure in place yet.

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We’ve got a “clean up the yard” day scheduled tomorrow.  The Mrs and kiddo and I.  I explain what we’re going to do.  They’re my untrained and ac reliant help.  I’m the seasoned vet.  On the docket is spraying weeds, removing about fifteen or so limbs from various trees, replacing sod from where the tree guys took out and ground stumps and messed the lawn up.  Also want to take some things to the dump and remulch an area and put pine straw down in another.  My wife says “you’ve got lofty goals”. I said, “I plan on playing Xbox by 1100.  What are you going to do afterwards?”  Something tells me my crew will be slowing me down.  I will most certainly enjoy EVERY bit of it!!!  Welcome to my world witches!! Let the fun begin!!!

In my head, I’m currently trying to rework the lyrics to Kid Rick’s “Cowboy”.  So you wanna be a lawn boy baaaby? Perhaps some old school rap? How bout a lil lawn boy magic? (Thanks young joc).

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When you take your truck in for an oil change and tire rotation and you literally can't leave because your ignition cylinder takes a dump and your truck can't start. At least it happened there and not some country back road leaving me stranded while waiting for AAA to tow me. 

This is why we have emergency savings because that cost was definitely not planned and couldn't have come at a worse time. Our quarterly insurance as well as annual registration and inspection for our vehicles is September/October as well as property tax for some land we own. Lots of money going out in a short period of time. It's all budgeted for, but an unexpected expense costing several hundred dollars would have screwed us big time if not for emergency  

There’s a simple fix For dat.  

It's almost 20 years old so I can't really be mad. And no, a Ford is not the answer. Lol

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

I too am curious.  Not only that, but do the buyers “expect” a certain poundage or quantity.  And if the total isn’t met, are there repercussions?  Or are the buyers the “big boys” and will buy as much as they can from their sources?  Like a good year for raisins, does Sun Maid box more? Or do they buy what they expect to sell based off their projections leaving some farmers with a [BLEEP] ton of raisins and no where to move them?

No worries man. I'll always make time to talk about this stuff; I think it's important for people to know more about how their food is made. And sold maybe too. 

The buyer has no expectation of tonnage per se. The expectation is on the farmer. Will I make or lose money lol. On a very loose level, if you take the industry average for production, the first half is paying for your cost and the second half is you net profit. So personally since I'm pretty small, my expectation might be to double the average. That's basically how I compete, because I'm the labor and I'm free lol. 

There is an expectation on quality. Of course, do you have pest? Worms in you nuts, vinegar flies hatching in your grapes? Rotten bunches? Basically disease and pests. 

Then you have another quality component as well. In almonds nut size is important, you got big nuts or baby nuts? Big nuts get paid more. Cherries are the same. Table grapes they like big berries too. 

Raisins I know best so I'll go through that process. Once they dry up and you bin them, you might let them cure for a week and send them in. The first thing that happens is they arrive at the USDA station. They dump your bins over a conveyor system and maybe 2-3 USDA guys watch them go over the conveyors. They look for things like glass, stickers, feathers, dog [BLEEP], etc. If you have any of that you're in trouble. Fail. 

Then I think they still do a "jar test" by hand. They scoop a random "jar" of raisins from x amount of your bins and just eyeball them for defects like dry rot or whatever. 

Then you get sent off to the airstream sorter. This is basically a vacuum machine, it calculates how much percentage of your crop it's able to vacuum up. Raisins that are able to be vacuumed up didn't have enough weight, meaning the berry didn't accumalete enough sugar when it was a grape. This is ultimately expressed as your B&B. Percentage of raisins that are graded a B grade and better. 

75-100 full bonus
50-75 partial bonus
35-50 weight dockage (you pay a penalty)
0-35 the USDA congratulates you on your fine production of Chinese bird seed. 

Then you'll have a moisture test done and they probably test for mold at the same time. "Meeting" raisins needs to be below 16% moisture by weight. And they pay a sliding bonus down to 10%. Under 10% will pass but then your just giving up weight, and you get paid by weight. 

16-22% stable raisins, but you'll pay a fee to have them dried down. 
22%+ not able to stabilize in bins, you'll have to schedule an emergency drying with the packer. This will cost a lot. 

Then your mold and microtoxin rating. 5% is the passing threshold. Over that and you pay to have your fuit cleaned. The higher the percent the more you pay in effect. Also a killer cost wise, but we have insurance available for this. This is basically the result of rain on the trays. 

If you pass everything they email you a report. If something fails you get a phone call. So when you send those trucks in, for a week or two you absolutely dread every time your phone rings.

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There’s a simple fix For dat.  

It's almost 20 years old so I can't really be mad. And no, a Ford is not the answer. Lol

Ahhh, the teenage years.  It’s sprouting fuzzies and acting out.  I remember when my Ford was just starting to come to age.  I threw it a bar mitzvah. Now it’s given me a lil grand baby Ford.

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I too am curious.  Not only that, but do the buyers “expect” a certain poundage or quantity.  And if the total isn’t met, are there repercussions?  Or are the buyers the “big boys” and will buy as much as they can from their sources?  Like a good year for raisins, does Sun Maid box more? Or do they buy what they expect to sell based off their projections leaving some farmers with a [BLEEP] ton of raisins and no where to move them?

No worries man. I'll always make time to talk about this stuff; I think it's important for people to know more about how their food is made. And sold maybe too. 

The buyer has no expectation of tonnage per se. The expectation is on the farmer. Will I make or lose money lol. On a very loose level, if you take the industry average for production, the first half is paying for your cost and the second half is you net profit. So personally since I'm pretty small, my expectation might be to double the average. That's basically how I compete, because I'm the labor and I'm free lol. 

There is an expectation on quality. Of course, do you have pest? Worms in you nuts, vinegar flies hatching in your grapes? Rotten bunches? Basically disease and pests. 

Then you have another quality component as well. In almonds nut size is important, you got big nuts or baby nuts? Big nuts get paid more. Cherries are the same. Table grapes they like big berries too. 

Raisins I know best so I'll go through that process. Once they dry up and you bin them, you might let them cure for a week and send them in. The first thing that happens is they arrive at the USDA station. They dump your bins over a conveyor system and maybe 2-3 USDA guys watch them go over the conveyors. They look for things like glass, stickers, feathers, dog [BLEEP], etc. If you have any of that you're in trouble. Fail. 

Then I think they still do a "jar test" by hand. They scoop a random "jar" of raisins from x amount of your bins and just eyeball them for defects like dry rot or whatever. 

Then you get sent off to the airstream sorter. This is basically a vacuum machine, it calculates how much percentage of your crop it's able to vacuum up. Raisins that are able to be vacuumed up didn't have enough weight, meaning the berry didn't accumalete enough sugar when it was a grape. This is ultimately expressed as your B&B. Percentage of raisins that are graded a B grade and better. 

75-100 full bonus
50-75 partial bonus
35-50 weight dockage (you pay a penalty)
0-35 the USDA congratulates you on your fine production of Chinese bird seed. 

Then you'll have a moisture test done and they probably test for mold at the same time. "Meeting" raisins needs to be below 16% moisture by weight. And they pay a sliding bonus down to 10%. Under 10% will pass but then your just giving up weight, and you get paid by weight. 

16-22% stable raisins, but you'll pay a fee to have them dried down. 
22%+ not able to stabilize in bins, you'll have to schedule an emergency drying with the packer. This will cost a lot. 

Then your mold and microtoxin rating. 5% is the passing threshold. Over that and you pay to have your fuit cleaned. The higher the percent the more you pay in effect. Also a killer cost wise, but we have insurance available for this. This is basically the result of rain on the trays. 

If you pass everything they email you a report. If something fails you get a phone call. So when you send those trucks in, for a week or two you absolutely dread every time your phone rings.

Wow.  How much of that do you know off that bat vs waiting for the report?  Surely, you know what you have crop wise for the most part, right?  Can you QA your crop beforehand? Is there anything you can do to the crop to better its grade? Or is it a here’s what we got with what was given us?

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How do you find buyers for your crops? I’m guessing there’s some kind of co-op that buys bulk produce? I’ve always wondered how farmers sell there crops. Very cool info senior

I too am curious.  Not only that, but do the buyers “expect” a certain poundage or quantity.  And if the total isn’t met, are there repercussions?  Or are the buyers the “big boys” and will buy as much as they can from their sources?  Like a good year for raisins, does Sun Maid box more? Or do they buy what they expect to sell based off their projections leaving some farmers with a [BLEEP] ton of raisins and no where to move them?

Most processors are a big boy and produce their own commodities, but also buy independent stuff outside their own. They charge us a fee to process our stuff so they make money in that fashion as well. For example, the price of almonds was between $1.60 and $2/lbs last year for the grower. But I have to pay the buyer something like 40 cents/lbs to hull the shell and process the nut. Then, anyone that's bought almonds in the last 10 years knows you pay like $6-$8 in the grocery store for them. Pretty easy to figure out why they fight to sign us up right? 

The second half of your questions is more complicated. I'll try to explain it succinctly. 

Our nut crops are unique in that there's no real competition for them. It's just how much can we sell vs what we produce. Last year we produced a record 3.2 billion lbs of almonds and the price almost dropped in half. This year it's forecasted around 2.8b and the price is easing back up. And last year was probably our peak. Production will level off and begin falling due to water shortages. 

Raisins we don't just compete against ourselves. Grapes can grow anywhere between the 30th and 50th parallels. Turkey actually outproduces us by a bit, and now China is right there too. The difference is they produce a lot of C grade raisins, and our B&B is usually pretty healthy. So there's a little bit of a premium for Ca raisins. And if one region happens to have some sort of natural disaster, the price can really swing. 

In a fresh market crop like cherries, it's a little different still. It's time to the market for us. Washington is the best, but we're the fastest. So how much of your cherries can you get off ripe before Washington fires up harvest? If your a month ahead of them you're rich, if you're a week ahead, call in the gunnysackers and start a roadside stand. 

And yes, they all forecast sales, and the previous seasons carryover plays a large part in it as well. Turkey produced 250k tons and we have 100k tons of unsold raisins? Price is dropping in half. Turkey had a hard freeze and is producing 100k tons and we have 50k of carryover, record price! Stuff like that. 

And yes also, the processors will absolutely leave you high and dry if they feel they don't need your crop and you don't have a long-term contract in place. Or actually more realistically, they'll just offer you a price 30% lower than it should be. That's why when I was saying is grew on "cash contracts" for 5 years it's super scary. I negotiate a new cash price each year right before harvest. Luckily I've only had 1 bad experience with that a long time ago when I tried to do organic wine.

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No worries man. I'll always make time to talk about this stuff; I think it's important for people to know more about how their food is made. And sold maybe too. 

The buyer has no expectation of tonnage per se. The expectation is on the farmer. Will I make or lose money lol. On a very loose level, if you take the industry average for production, the first half is paying for your cost and the second half is you net profit. So personally since I'm pretty small, my expectation might be to double the average. That's basically how I compete, because I'm the labor and I'm free lol. 

There is an expectation on quality. Of course, do you have pest? Worms in you nuts, vinegar flies hatching in your grapes? Rotten bunches? Basically disease and pests. 

Then you have another quality component as well. In almonds nut size is important, you got big nuts or baby nuts? Big nuts get paid more. Cherries are the same. Table grapes they like big berries too. 

Raisins I know best so I'll go through that process. Once they dry up and you bin them, you might let them cure for a week and send them in. The first thing that happens is they arrive at the USDA station. They dump your bins over a conveyor system and maybe 2-3 USDA guys watch them go over the conveyors. They look for things like glass, stickers, feathers, dog [BLEEP], etc. If you have any of that you're in trouble. Fail. 

Then I think they still do a "jar test" by hand. They scoop a random "jar" of raisins from x amount of your bins and just eyeball them for defects like dry rot or whatever. 

Then you get sent off to the airstream sorter. This is basically a vacuum machine, it calculates how much percentage of your crop it's able to vacuum up. Raisins that are able to be vacuumed up didn't have enough weight, meaning the berry didn't accumalete enough sugar when it was a grape. This is ultimately expressed as your B&B. Percentage of raisins that are graded a B grade and better. 

75-100 full bonus
50-75 partial bonus
35-50 weight dockage (you pay a penalty)
0-35 the USDA congratulates you on your fine production of Chinese bird seed. 

Then you'll have a moisture test done and they probably test for mold at the same time. "Meeting" raisins needs to be below 16% moisture by weight. And they pay a sliding bonus down to 10%. Under 10% will pass but then your just giving up weight, and you get paid by weight. 

16-22% stable raisins, but you'll pay a fee to have them dried down. 
22%+ not able to stabilize in bins, you'll have to schedule an emergency drying with the packer. This will cost a lot. 

Then your mold and microtoxin rating. 5% is the passing threshold. Over that and you pay to have your fuit cleaned. The higher the percent the more you pay in effect. Also a killer cost wise, but we have insurance available for this. This is basically the result of rain on the trays. 

If you pass everything they email you a report. If something fails you get a phone call. So when you send those trucks in, for a week or two you absolutely dread every time your phone rings.

Wow.  How much of that do you know off that bat vs waiting for the report?  Surely, you know what you have crop wise for the most part, right?  Can you QA your crop beforehand? Is there anything you can do to the crop to better its grade? Or is it a here’s what we got with what was given us?

The sugar and maturity component I'll know dead on. I can pretty easily test for that in the field. What causes problems is sometimes you can't get the vine to build sugar quickly enough and you have to lay them down at 19 brix instead of 21. Then you're hoping to just squeek through. 

The dryness, the USDA office has a tester available, but I think it's less reliable than me just grabbing a handful of raisins these days. TBH, I overwhelmingly have an over-drying problem. Save for this current situation with the giant smoke cloud. 

The mold can be tougher, because it's a pretty low threshold, but there are definite warning signs that'll make you worry a little there. If you see specks of white in the bins or something.

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I too am curious.  Not only that, but do the buyers “expect” a certain poundage or quantity.  And if the total isn’t met, are there repercussions?  Or are the buyers the “big boys” and will buy as much as they can from their sources?  Like a good year for raisins, does Sun Maid box more? Or do they buy what they expect to sell based off their projections leaving some farmers with a [BLEEP] ton of raisins and no where to move them?

Most processors are a big boy and produce their own commodities, but also buy independent stuff outside their own. They charge us a fee to process our stuff so they make money in that fashion as well. For example, the price of almonds was between $1.60 and $2/lbs last year for the grower. But I have to pay the buyer something like 40 cents/lbs to hull the shell and process the nut. Then, anyone that's bought almonds in the last 10 years knows you pay like $6-$8 in the grocery store for them. Pretty easy to figure out why they fight to sign us up right? 

The second half of your questions is more complicated. I'll try to explain it succinctly. 

Our nut crops are unique in that there's no real competition for them. It's just how much can we sell vs what we produce. Last year we produced a record 3.2 billion lbs of almonds and the price almost dropped in half. This year it's forecasted around 2.8b and the price is easing back up. And last year was probably our peak. Production will level off and begin falling due to water shortages. 

Raisins we don't just compete against ourselves. Grapes can grow anywhere between the 30th and 50th parallels. Turkey actually outproduces us by a bit, and now China is right there too. The difference is they produce a lot of C grade raisins, and our B&B is usually pretty healthy. So there's a little bit of a premium for Ca raisins. And if one region happens to have some sort of natural disaster, the price can really swing. 

In a fresh market crop like cherries, it's a little different still. It's time to the market for us. Washington is the best, but we're the fastest. So how much of your cherries can you get off ripe before Washington fires up harvest? If your a month ahead of them you're rich, if you're a week ahead, call in the gunnysackers and start a roadside stand. 

And yes, they all forecast sales, and the previous seasons carryover plays a large part in it as well. Turkey produced 250k tons and we have 100k tons of unsold raisins? Price is dropping in half. Turkey had a hard freeze and is producing 100k tons and we have 50k of carryover, record price! Stuff like that. 

And yes also, the processors will absolutely leave you high and dry if they feel they don't need your crop and you don't have a long-term contract in place. Or actually more realistically, they'll just offer you a price 30% lower than it should be. That's why when I was saying is grew on "cash contracts" for 5 years it's super scary. I negotiate a new cash price each year right before harvest. Luckily I've only had 1 bad experience with that a long time ago when I tried to do organic wine.

So many questions.  
As far as the nuts go, do they only buy the unshelled  nuts? Can one hull  them and avoid the .40/lb fee? And if so, I’m sure the machines that do that cost a pretty penny.  Is it worthwhile to have the machinery to process the nuts and sell higher? I’m guessing not otherwise that would be the thing to do. I’ve seen too much on tv about similar industries.  Seems to be the norm to grow and sell then let the other guy do to it what they want. But one has to wonder, if they want “x” to “y” so they can “z”, then “y” would be more profitable.

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Very informative and interesting, SF.

Anyone remember this? 

'You put a seed in, you put dirt on top': Bloomberg suggests farming is easy in resurfaced comments | Daily Mail Online

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