Iran exported 21,720 tons of pistachio worth $154.12 million during the first quarter of the current Iranian year (March 20-June 20).
According to Spokesman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration Rouhollah Latifi, Iranian pistachios were shipped to 54 countries in spring, with China topping the list with 5,547 tons worth $35.4 million, Fars News Agency reported.
China was followed by Germany, Iraq and Russia with 2,982, 1,866 and 1,455 tons of imports respectively, he added.
Latifi did not mention the value of exports to these countries.
In fact, pistachio topped the list of Iran's agricultural and food export products during the three months under review in terms of value.
Iran exported more than 2 million tons of agrifood products worth over $1.25 billion in Q1, registering a 16.29% rise in tonnage, but 3.69% decline in value compared with last year’s corresponding period, according to Agriculture Ministry.
According to Latifi, Iran was the world’s second largest exporter of pistachio in 2019 with $586 million, after the US with $1.56 billion.
Iran’s annual domestic demand for pistachio amounts to between 35,000 and 45,000 tons, accounting for 20% of the total output.
On average, Iran exports 80% of its total pistachio yields.
US Rivalry
American farmers have deposed Iran as king of the global pistachio industry, benefiting from US policies hostile to Tehran, climate change and the egregious failures of economic and water management that have sucked the Islamic Republic’s lakes and aquifers dry.
The country is unlikely ever to recover its pistachio crown, spawning a race among other producers to grow the nut and fill the gap created by its defeat, Bloomberg reported in February.
Persia enjoyed a virtual monopoly on cultivating the hardy yet demanding pistachio tree for at least 1,000 years. Giving pistachio farmers more access to land and water was a core offer of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The country devoted ever more land to growing the fatty green nut and replaced the ancient qanat system of subsoil canals that fed the crop with higher-volume water pumps. Harvests boomed, even through the chaos of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Yet the US, which started to produce pistachios only in 1976, has now overtaken Iran as the world’s leading producer. Catching up took a while and picking the one moment of victory is hard, as pistachio harvests can be volatile, alternating between fat and lean years.
But from 2004 to 2009, the Islamic Republic still accounted for 40% of global production on average, followed by the US at 33%. By 2014-19, those positions were reversed: 47% of the global total came from the US and 27% from Iran. A catastrophic 2018-19 season briefly pulled Iran’s share as low as 7%.
Outside Iran, pistachio farmers are hunting for virgin territories to fill a global shortage.
The International Nut & Dried Fruit Council, a Spain-based trade association, estimates the shortage to be 10-15%.
“There is quite an interest in new countries, like Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan, where we are also doing a project,” says Pino Calcagni, the council’s vice chairman and chief executive officer of Besana Group, a nut-trading company based in Italy.
Spain, China and Australia—at least until the recent fires—have all been expanding production, too. Besana Group is developing new suppliers in Kazakhstan, Romania and Ukraine.
Since 1979, the US has switched from banning imports of Iranian pistachios outright to imposing punitive import duties of just over 241% and back again to banning them. The duties and bans have accompanied broader economic sanctions that restricted the financing available to Iran for investment, whether in agriculture, or oil and gas.
The Iranian industry’s biggest problems are homegrown, according to Kaveh Madani, who briefly served as deputy minister for the environment from 2017 to 2018.
About 90% of Iran’s water consumption go to agriculture, with 52% of that drawn from wells that rely on declining rainfall for replenishment. As a result, the country is second only to India in terms of depleting groundwater for agriculture and industry. It’s hard to see a way back without a massive change in policy approach.
High crop yields require investment in modern drip-feed irrigation systems, efficient water management and good governance. And though far from a thirsty crop relative to their value, pistachios do require water—11,363 cubic meters per ton of nuts, according to one study. That’s more than four times as much as a ton of wheat, maize, or rice.
The US industry has proved more resilient to climate challenges; American farms have invested more, and their water supply—for now at least—is more certain. Relentless breeding of stronger rootstocks means US pistachio saplings can grow to fruition in four years, rather than 7 to 10. Add to that improvements in irrigation and other technologies, and average US yields have tripled to more than 3.5 tons of in-shell pistachio nuts per hectare, from just over 1 ton in 1980, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
Iranian yields started in about the same place but never improved.
A plan to build a canal to Kerman (a major hub for pistachio cultivation in Iran), similar to one that brings water from the Sacramento River to the farms of Central California, never materialized. Even if it had, it’s likely that no canal could solve Iran’s problems, which are mainly about governance: More water would encourage the cultivation of more land, more production, and more strain on the water supply.
The bigger problem, according to Madani, who now teaches at Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, has been the persistent failure to enforce regulations designed to protect the aquifers that feed Kerman’s pistachio groves.
Shutting down the more than 400,000 unlicensed wells that farmers have drilled is politically unpalatable. Rather than penalize illegal drilling, the government has issued two blanket amnesties for unlicensed wells.
