The commercial hazelnut industry has flourished in Oregon’s Willamette Valley for more than 100 years with about 1,000 farms growing filberts on more than 80,000 acres, according to those in the know.

One such grower is James McDonald out of Wilsonville, the geographical origin of the McDonald Hazelnut Tree introduced a decade ago as an early-maturing, disease-resistant (to mold and Eastern filbert blight), grower-friendly variety.

McDonald and his fellow nut growers are breathing a sigh of relief as another harvest year has come to an end and, “I expect this year will be one of my best as sampling has shown this crop to look good and taste good,” he said.

“According to feedback from the processors, I think everybody will be happy with the 2023 production.

“I’m still digesting numbers from the five varieties we grow on our 100-acre orchard, but this year looks to be our fourth highest since 1974 as the mature trees produced a good return. The nuts I cracked open prior to harvest had very few defects, so I’m happy with the way the year went.”

Final, final numbers have yet to be announced, but the conservative “guess-timation” in the range of 95,000 tons differs only slightly from the early season --- subjective --- numbers that were reported in the range of 100,000 tons.

As to pricing, McDonald, citing industry chit-chat, said, “Rumor has it that prices will be good this year after a start in the 45-55 cents-a-pound range. Just looking at what the market’s doing worldwide, Oregon should be positioned for a good bonus. I can’t put a number on that, but it should be more than we’re getting now.”

A good crop

Also watching how hazelnut numbers play out is Nik Wiman, a field-oriented biologist at Oregon State University who was on-hand when millions of new trees were planted in 2010, trees that are entering full production stage.

“This year’s crop looks really, really good,” he said. “Last year was tough with the low prices that drove some growers near the breaking point. Some folks definitely lost money last year, but we’re now at a stage where it looks like we’ll have record crops going forward as we still have a lot of young trees just starting to come into their good bearing years.”

Very few growers are deciding to cut and run at this point. “I’ve seen one or two that were overextended pull out their trees, but nobody’s ripping out orchards wholesale. They all know this is a long-term game and we’re still a young industry in transition from an in-shell industry exporting primarily to Asia to a sector joining the expanded world as more of a kernel-oriented industry.

“There’s a lot of room for us to grow and expand our reach within the industry and we’re really just starting to sort of tap into that.”

So while profit price points of late haven’t garnered a lot of praise, blue skies are on the horizon.  “I think we’re going to be looking at another record crop and if I had to predict based on more and more orchards coming into their strong bearing years, I think our industry, overall, should be able to respond to a growing need.

“We’re going through a period where we’re still figuring it all out and we’re getting new buyers.  We already have buyers like Ferrero that could use most of our crop for their Nutrella plant in Canada, but I think with our increasingly larger yields, we’ll be expanding our marketplace.”