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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • MAY 2019


Hazelnut production expands across BC Pest pressures


Growers encouraged to seek out niche retailers to expand markets as nut supply increases


by PETER MITHAM ABBOTSFORD – BC


hazelnut growers are looking to the future as production recovers from the scourge of Eastern Filbert Blight with the help of new resources from the province. A third round of applications for $300,000 worth of replant funding opened at the beginning of April and runs until July 15. A production guide oriented to new growers is also being uploaded to the BC Ministry of Agriculture’s website. The ministry’s hazelnut specialist, Karina Sakalauskas, told the BC Hazelnut Growers


Association’s annual general meeting in Abbotsford on April 8 that $93,000 was spent on replant activities in the program’s first year. The funding supported eight projects and removal of 3,025 trees on 24 acres and planting 8,254 trees on 38 acres.


Since the funding is


granted at a rate of $100,000 a year and unspent funds cannot be carried forward, growers lost $7,000 worth of funding at the end of the program’s first year. A second intake last fall means $78,000 is available for replant projects this year. Successful projects to date


are seeing orchards renewed or established both in the Fraser Valley as well as on Pender Island, Vancouver Island and in the Okanagan Valley.


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the Lower Mainland are prompting the association to actively position itself as the voice of hazelnut growers across the entire province. Currently, the association has 33 members, with “very few” from outside the Fraser Valley. However, the annual meeting attracted growers and potential growers from


not only the Lower Mainland but the Nicola Valley. The centrepiece of the meeting was a presentation by Douglas Hart of Hart & Associates Management Consultants Ltd. in Toronto, which recently completed a market assessment study for the Ontario Hazelnut Association. The study included input from the BC Hazelnut Growers Association and its members, and the presentation was an opportunity to hear the results.


Based on data from 2016,


Hart pegged global hazelnut production at 1.7 billion pounds, with producers receiving an average of US$1.23 a pound for their nuts. The biggest producers are Turkey, with 71% of production, and Italy, at 14.6%. US growers are third, producing 89.3 million pounds, 5.2% of the global supply.


The market for hazelnuts


in Canada is relatively small by world standards, at less than 30,000 pounds and a value of $147.9 million. Shelled nuts account for 92% of sales, and dominate imports. An importer pays $2.50 to $4.50 per pound for


New hazelnut varieties with greater resistance to Eastern Filbert Blight are helping the BC industry get back on its feet. But provincial entomologist Tracy Hueppelsheuser told the annual meeting of the BC Hazelnut Growers Association they need to be vigilant for Brown Marmorated Stink Bug. Growers in Oregon have seen blank nuts as well as


shrivelled and corked kernels as a result of the pest, examples of which were circulated among growers for them to know the enemy. Corking seems to occur if the bug penetrates the shell at kernel expansion. “Hazelnuts is one of the crops where I really think we need to pay attention, and that’s what I want to focus on this year,” she said. Other concerns include filbert worm, which Hueppelsheuser has three years’ worth of funding to investigate. She would like to monitor at least 10 fields between May and October, and invites collaborators among growers.


— Peter Mitham


those nuts, while the price at Ontario retailers ranges from $7.50 to $27 a pound. One of the questions Hart was attempting to answer in his study was whether or not there is a market for an Ontario-grown hazelnuts. “It would depend on the


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price,” he told BC growers. Quality is important, he explained, but retailers need products that will give them the margins they need to survive. This means production is a volume game for producers if they want to capture a share of the larger market, something that’s tough for the smaller, independent growers that characterize Canada’s production. The largest producer in BC has 60 acres, Hart said, but the average grower has just two to four acres. This is similar to Ontario, though the largest grower has 55 acres and the average grower has between one and eight acres. “Most small growers are testing their crop,” he said of


Ontario. While large growers have


plans for their farms, he said, “none of them expect to be supplying Ferrero at this point” (Ferrero operates a plant in Brantford that produces the popular hazelnut spread Nutella, Ferrero Rocher chocolates and other products for sale across North America and Australia.) Hart’s advice to Ontario


growers, which he encouraged BC growers to embrace, is to chip away at the 3.3 million pounds imported each year for sale through distributors such as GFS Canada and to retailers. The first steps might be to small, local retailers rather than the big chains. “It isn’t much,” he said. “But


it gets you going.” Sales to grocers could


follow for the larger growers, or if growers band together to supply grocers when international supplies come in short. “You could be a stand-in


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for them,” he said. “This is the strategy we suggested for Ontario, and it would probably work for BC as well.” Fraser Valley Hazelnuts Ltd.


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buys most of the hazelnuts produced in the province, and owner Don Hooge told Hart that the company has a market for all the nuts currently being produced. He’s also working to make connections that will support future growth, attending events such as the BC Ministry of Agriculture’s Every Chef Needs a Farmer, Every Farmer Needs a Chef event in Vancouver last fall. “We have a strategy in place as to where we’re selling,” he said. Should production rise sufficiently, the association would consider a nominal production levy to support research and marketing.


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