Hazelnuts provide a very profitable income far greater than what any annual cereal crop can offer, after the necessary 6-year wait before the trees produce a significant amount of nuts. Hazelnuts won because, on the one hand, labor needs seemed more compatible with the family's work of producing milk and growing 1,400 acres of corn, soybeans, alfalfa, winter wheat and a cover crop of rye as fodder. In recent years, Ferrero has periodically appeared in the press in the context of the traceability of the supply chain of the ingredients used: hazelnuts, palm oil and cocoa. Hazelnuts form clusters and flowers in early spring, in mid-March in the Midwest, where I live, and they don't form leaves until several weeks later.
Because of the way hazelnuts are grown, there is little you can do to keep squirrels away from trees, other than locking them in a fruit cage covered with a wire mesh, which seems a bit excessive. To reduce risks, these international companies, as well as some European chocolate producers, have been trying to diversify hazelnut sources for the past 10 years, driving the rapid development of hazelnut production in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Argentina, Chile, Australia, South Africa, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. However, the truth is that hazelnut production is becoming more local and the concentration of production is declining. It is also worth taking a closer look at the new sales markets, for example, China and the United Arab Emirates, which are actively increasing hazelnut imports, although the volumes of these imports are still negligible.
For breakfast on Sundays, when I usually prepare something elegant for my family, I like to complete the pancakes with toasted hazelnuts or chocolates. The advantage of new plantations over old ones is the use of the latest intensive technologies for growing hazelnuts based on many years of experience. When growing hazelnuts in the coldest part of this range, choose American hazelnuts, which are more cold-tolerant than European hazelnuts. However, at the end of the marketing season, farmers in the hazelnut industry can expect to receive a payment higher than the current two-level minimum of 90 cents per pound for cereal varieties and 65 cents per pound for shell cultivars, said Ross of the HGBA.
As you can see in the graph, Mexico, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Poland, Italy, Romania, Brazil and Russia were among the countries that have actively increased their hazelnut imports over the past decade. Around a third of Turkish hazelnuts are bought by the Italian group Ferrero, which uses them mainly for the production of chocolate paste with nuts and Nutella, as well as in other confectionery products. The main consumer of hazelnuts in the world is the EU confectionery industry, which accounts for 80% of all hazelnut purchases.
