The Iran is about to shake up the market for Pistachio

The Iran is ready to return to the international market of commodities, flood it re-supplied and generate the risk of causing a fall in prices.
Oil? Maybe, but there is another sector that could be even more disturbed by a nuclear Pact between Iran and the West: pistachio.
The Iran has much more influence on the market than appetizers in the trade of crude oil. Although it is only the seventh largest producer of crude oil, the Middle Eastern country competes with the u.s. for the rank of largest pistachio grower.
As well as sales of oil to the United States and Europe, the pistachio were barred by sanctions.
As the negotiations between Washington and Tehran to resolve the nuclear dispute a decade are approaching the deadline for a final agreement, June 30, operators are predicting that prices will fall.
"The new offer will cause an impact," said Hakan Bahceci, CEO of Hakan Agro DMCC, House of trade in grains, nuts and legumes with headquarters in Dubai.
Perhaps the hardest hit are Californian producers, which doubled the area of pistachio cultivation in the last ten years despite dry conditions.
The production of pistachios in California began modestly in 1979 and reached 513 million pounds last year, more than triple the 2004 harvest, according to the Administrative Committee for Pistachios from the United States.
Good news
For lovers of the nuts, the increase of the offer would be good news: prices have risen 40 percent in the last five years because of supply shortages.
However, so far, the California pistachio industry is not worrying. Bob Klein, Manager of the Administrative Committee for pistachios, based in Fresno, said that Iran will have difficulties to sell in Europe and the United States due to high levels of contamination caused by aflatoxin, a toxic chemical produced by a fungus.
"I don't see a lot of concern in the industry with around Iran," he said in an interview. Even if prices drop a bit, the producers will continue thriving in California.
"Prices have been good. The pistachio nut is a perennial crop more profitable "in the u.s., he said.
The u.s. pistachio crop was valued at about $ 1.3 billion last year. For Iran, the harvest has more or less the same value, but is more relevant to the country for being its second largest source of export, after crude oil.
Hostage crisis
The u.s. banned Iranian pistachio intermittently during the last three decades. The first embargo occurred in 1979, after the u.s. Embassy in Tehran was taken and the hostage crisis.
The ban was suspended four years later, but entered into force again in 1987 during the war between Iran and Iraq, before being suspended again in 2000.
Ten years later, President Barack Obama approved the law in fact banned imports of Iranian pistachios in the USA.
"Currently, you cannot import Iranian origin pistachios for the u.s.," said Erich Ferrari, whose company Ferrari Associates, based in Washington, lobbied the u.s. Government on behalf of the operators of commodities in Iran.
Other Western sanctions designed to stop the trade in oil and gas, are also restricting the ability of Iran to sell pistachio in Europe because of the limits imposed on banking transactions and transport, said traders.
China, India and Turkey continue to be big buyers, and some Iranian pistachios are able to reach the European market from Turkey.