Hazelnut’s hazy future

There is a term in Turkish, very much repeated every mid-summer in Istanbul that can be translated as “to go nuts;” not in the sense of losing one’s mind, but leaving for the countryside for the hazelnut harvest. Many hazelnut growers have links with Istanbul, as most have jobs in the service sector, but when it is the season for hazelnut picking, it is hard to keep them in the city. Even if there is cheaper labor coming from the southeast, many natives go back to their Black Sea homeland to work in the hazelnut orchards. It is almost like a religious pilgrimage. Hazelnut harvest is a very important part of their cultural identity, but now there is a haze over the future of the hazelnut industry.

Turkey, or the Black Sea region to be precise, grows 75 percent of the hazelnuts consumed in the world. If Turkey refuses to sell hazelnuts to Europe, the European chocolate industry would be in deep trouble. However, Turkey never had the upper hand in fixing the base prices for the world hazelnut market. A very frequently repeated phrase is: “Hazelnuts are grown in Turkey, but its price is determined in Hamburg.” It seems that Turkey will never ever have the chance to determine the fate of hazelnuts again. Italy’s Ferrero recently bought the biggest Turkish export company, Oltan Export-Import, which used to sell 50 percent of Turkish hazelnuts to Europe. This means that Ferrero (also owner of Nutella and Kinder) will now control one third of world’s hazelnut trade. How this will affect hazelnut growers is a big question of the future.

The season for hazelnuts already had a bitter start this year. At the end of March a heavy snowfall and frost had hit the hazelnut orchards with an estimated 25 percent increase in prices...