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When I first joined California Almond Growers Exchange as a sales
representative in September 1961, the entire California almond
crop (66 million shelled pounds) was about what the industry
sells and ships now in eight days! These were considered big
almond crops in those days, and the job we all had at what is now
called Blue Diamond Growers was to find new places and people to
whom to sell them. Growers were planting more almond trees almost
every year.

From left: North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, American Farm Bureau
President Henry Voss, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Blue Diamond Growers
CEO Roger Baccigaluppi, and Illinois Sen. Charles H. Percy
discuss the U.S. farm economy.

The CEO at California Almond Growers Exchange, or CAGE, in those
days was Glenn Stalker, and while I did not report to him
anything close to directly, I still remember him saying to me,
and others in the late 1960s or early 1970s, “Where can we
possibly sell all these almonds?”

Today the California crop is averaging near 3 billion pounds.
California almond production is first in the world (75 percent),
and by a wide margin, followed by Australia (9 percent), Spain (6
percent), Turkey and Portugal (2 percent each), followed in turn
by very small production (about 1 percent) in Italy, Morocco,
China and Tunisia. When I first joined CAGE, Italy had been the
world’s top producer just a few years earlier.

A child examines candied almonds at the Blue Diamond Growers
pavilion at the 1970 World Expo in Osaka.

When I became president and CEO of CAGE in
1974, the crop size had almost quadrupled to 229 million pounds.
The announcement of the closing of the processing facilities in
Sacramento (the main office will remain here) reminded me of who
our neighbors were back some 50 years or so ago. 

Our next-door neighbor to the west was at that time the largest
Del Monte cannery in the United States, possibly the world, which
by that time was processing only peaches. Next door on the
eastern side was a Golden State Creamery, which eventually became
Foremast Dairy. To the north, our neighbors were more Del Monte
facilities (storage) and the by-then-unused railyards of the old
Sacramento Northern Railway.

The Blue Diamond Growers pavilion featured a variety of
California almond products.

That interurban railroad connected Chico,
via Sacramento, to San Francisco, crossing the Bay Bridge on the
lower level, along with the Key System trains from Oakland and
Berkeley. All terminated in the Transbay Terminal in downtown San
Francisco. (The Sacramento terminal was at 1121 Terminal Way,
between H, I, 11th and 12th streets). We also had a smaller
neighbor, but still an industrial facility, just east of our
office building on the south side of C Street that was in the
hide and fur business. 

I mention all these neighbors because, while I was CEO, we
acquired all of them over the years to deal with larger and
larger crops every year. By the time I retired on Dec. 31, 1991,
crops were close to 650 million pounds, nearly triple the crops
when I became CEO and 10 times what they were when I joined the
company.

From left: Blue Diamond Growers CEO Roger Baccigaluppi,
California State Department of Food and Agriculture Director
Richard Rominger and California Director of International Trade
Richard King pose during a 1970s visit to China.

All those neighboring facilities we acquired
were converted into processing facilities for the most part,
storage and, in the case of the fur building, offices. 

Sometime in the future all of this, from D Street north, across
the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) tracks to the
American River will be sold and converted to some new usage. Many
have remarked on the future of this large downtown property,
likely the biggest single property sale or conversion in modern
Sacramento aside from the Railyards, so I will not speculate
further. Whatever happens there will be a huge opportunity for
the buyer(s) and, hopefully, the city.

A child in western China near Urumqi hugs a bag of Blue Diamond
almonds.

Of course, it saddens me seeing all those facilities we added and
nourished moving to Salida (which we also expanded) and Turlock.
Those locations are much closer to the center of almond
production these days, as was Sacramento in 1910, when CAGE was
founded right here in the River City.

It is a new era, indeed, in the almond industry with 3 billion
pounds of crops and exports to just one country, India, of more
than 400 million pounds — twice as much as the entire production
in California when I became CEO. Seven hundred million pounds are
sold in the United States, more than four times the entire
California production in the ‘70s. All of this didn’t just happen
but was due to the efforts of an industry totally focused on
increasing consumption wherever they could. I am proud to have
been a part of Blue Diamond Growers, where we had a team of truly
great people devoted to getting the best bottom line possible for
our members. 

The Blue Diamond Growers pavilion at the World Expo 1970 in Osaka
introduced some people to California almonds for the first time.

While others in the industry contributed to this growth, without
Blue Diamond leading the way, it never would have happened. This
started in the Sacramento facilities with the sorters who did a
superb job of making Blue Diamond the finest — the industry
standard. It is those people I am most concerned about as the
company stops processing at 18th and C streets. It was sometimes
generations of the same families, largely women, who made Blue
Diamond almonds special. Some of these people will be able to
move to jobs in the San Joaquin Valley facilities, but most, I
suspect, will not. 

In my first year with CAGE, we were already exploring and having
some success in foreign markets. We even had an export manager in
those days, when most companies did not. We were very simply
growing a lot more almonds than we could sell here. We had to
develop export markets as well as expand U.S. consumption. One of
the great examples of this Blue Diamond leadership was India,
which did not import a single pound of almonds from the U.S. in
the early ‘70s but is now the second largest market in the world,
after the United States, for the California product.

A Blue Diamond sack from circa 1970s displays the city it was
packed, Sacramento.

In more recent years, some credit must go to
the Almond Board of California, supported by the entire industry;
but in the earlier years, all growth in sales was due to the
efforts of the people of Blue Diamond: sorters, mechanics,
clerks, salesmen, logistics management, executives and, of
course, the growers who supported their efforts.

Recent years have been difficult for growers as supply has been
in excess of demand. Falling prices make it difficult for growers
to survive. Fortunately, after relentless increases over 65
years, the growth in acres planted to almonds has declined, and
that combined with increasing growth in consumption, should bring
better times. The never-ending growth in almond acreage and thus
production has finally started to slow.

Nevertheless, almonds remain the largest crop in California in
terms of planted acreage, the No. 1 U.S. specialty crop export in
terms of value, way ahead of pistachios, frozen potatoes and
wine. Almonds are also California’s second-highest value farm
commodity after dairy products, but ahead of grapes, cattle,
lettuce and strawberries.

While the headquarters’ offices, according to the company, will
stay somewhere in this immediate area, as will the people who
fueled this growth in sales, marketing, finance, HR, production
technology and related departments, it was the predecessors of
these people who set the tone and led the way to huge expansion
and better profitability. While I left the company many years
ago, I still cherish the memories of the thousands of committed
people who really made the industry what it is today.

Roger Baccigaluppi is the former CEO of Blue Diamond Growers
and a former member of Comstock’s Editorial Advisory Board.

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