I haven't really come across anything concrete backing up that Agra-net story.
The closest relevant thing I have seen is the recent Fairfax story on the cherry farmers being adverse impacted by the severe weather in September, cherry trees and almond trees fall into the same genus and so there might be a bit of a correlation. However all the locations mentioned in that article were quite some distance from the growing locations of Select Harvests.
The Agra-net story also seems a bit tentative, note the word 'might' in the first line:
Australia’s 2017 almond crop might come in lower than previously forecast after a spell of adverse weather in September and into October, Joseph Ebbage, marketing programme manager of the Almond Board of Australia (ABA) told Foodnews on Sunday.
There is only so much you can tell from those weather sites, but looking at the weather history at the company almond growing locations (Loxton, Robinvale etc) I get the impression that the weather wouldn't have been a disaster for nut-development, although there was certainly some heavy rainfall on some days.
The orchards in NSW have been subject to the most extreme weather conditions. But it seems clear that none of the company orchards have been impacted by floods.
I was a bit worried about possible flooding in the NSW orchards, but I remembered I was a shareholder in a small mining company focused on an area only a stones throw from Griffith. Last week I asked the MD of this company if there had been much flooding around Griffith, but he was of the opinion that flooding in the Griffith area wasn't much of an issue.
As MarkieMills mentioned earlier, the lack of information available may reflect the fact that no-one is really sure what impact the weather will have on the crop size next year.
But there are two positives: Firstly, it seems clear there has been no flooding in any of the orchards locations, which would be the worst outcome for Select. Secondly, with all the recent rainfall it could be expected that the company will benefit from a lower water price in this financial year.
