California almond production

As California has produced more almonds, fewer Americans have drowned in swimming pools, a correlation that suggests either that almonds are nature's flotation device or that the same state that grows 80 percent of the world's almonds is also home to more pools than any other, and both trends are measuring different aspects of California's relationship with water—using too much of it for agriculture and keeping too little of it safe for swimming. The coefficient is -0.905 across seventeen years, during which the almond orchards expanded and the pools got safer.

California almond production grew from about 1.6 billion pounds in 2005 to over 3.1 billion by 2021, making it the state's most valuable crop and one of its most water-intensive, consuming roughly 10 percent of the state's agricultural water. Pool drownings declined nationally as safety standards improved. The negative correlation exists because one metric was steadily rising (almonds, driven by export demand and orchard expansion) while the other was steadily declining (drownings, driven by regulation). California's dominance in both almonds and swimming pools creates an amusing but entirely coincidental geographic overlap, but the actual trends are driven by agriculture economics and public safety policy respectively.

Seventeen years of almonds rising and drownings declining is a California story told in two very different registers: one about agricultural ambition, the other about aquatic safety. The orchards bloom, the pools get fences, and the connection between them is nothing more than a state that does both things with characteristic enthusiasm. The almond milk, at least, has never drowned anyone.