12
CapitalPress.com
Friday, September 6, 2019
Engin Esen
Aslan Karaca shows a hazelnut from his orchard in Giresun, Turkey.
Turkey: The country grows 17 types of hazelnuts
from the diseases. Both problems
are resolved through spraying and
have been addressed through gov-
ernment strategic plans, Ogutken
said.
Continued from Page 1
An estimated 50,000 to 60,000
tons, worth more than $400 mil-
lion, are sold on the domestic mar-
ket, said Salih Ogutken, deputy
general manager of Fiskobirlik.
“When you combine both mar-
kets (export and domestic), it
reaches a volume of about $2 bil-
lion,” Ogutken said.
Inside Turkey, the Black Sea
region produces the lion’s share —
about 65% — of the helmet-shaped
nuts, known also as filberts, or
“fındık” in Turkish, according to
the Turkish Statistical Institute.
The Black Sea province of Ordu
alone produces 35% of the coun-
try’s total yield.
Hand-picked crop
Ideal environment
The Black Sea region’s moder-
ate temperatures, perpetual rain-
fall, pH-balanced soil and pre-
cipitous hills create a nearly ideal
ecology for the trees, according
to Ankara University agriculture
Professor A. Ilhami Koksal, in
his 2002 book, “Turkish Hazelnut
Cultivars.”
The first record of hazelnuts in
present-day Turkey dates back at
least 300 years before Christ, Kok-
sal wrote.
Today, nearly 1.8 million acres
in Turkey are planted to hazelnuts,
according to the country’s statisti-
cal institute. As a contrast, about
70,000 acres of hazelnut trees are
planted in Oregon, by far the top
U.S. producer of the crop. About
1.2 million acres of almonds grow
in California.
Each acre of hazelnut orchards
contains between 200 and 280 trees
and produces 440 to 1,060 pounds
of shelled nuts, Ogutken said.
There
are
approximately
410,000 hazelnut producers reg-
istered in the country through its
farmer registration system, but
there are also an estimated 40,000
producers, mostly small landown-
ers, who are not registered, often
because they inherited land that
was divided among siblings and
want to avoid the paperwork to
register with the state, he said.
Many varieties
The country grows 17 types of
Gurhan Eris
Sedat Gunlu, a worker at the family farm of Ihsan Bulent Yuce and
Yuce’s nephew, Gurhan Eris.
hazelnuts, some of which are com-
bined in orchards to encourage pol-
lination, according to Koksal. Ana-
tolian species include the corylus
avellana L. (common hazelnut),
maxima mill. (giant filbert), pon-
tica c. koch (Mediterranean hazel-
nut) and corylus colurna L. (Turk-
ish hazelnut).
In North America, the native
species are corylus americana
marsh and corylus cornuta marsh,
Koksal wrote.
The hazelnuts grown in Giresun
province are considered the best in
the world in terms of quality, taste
and aroma, said Kubilay Yaman,
an international nut and seed bro-
ker based there.
The Tombul, also known as
the Giresun oily hazelnut, is a
round nut with a high fat content,
which lends its rich flavor. The
variety accounts for the major-
ity of hazelnuts grown in Gire-
sun province, but farmers also
grow two other varieties that are
popular — the “black” Kalinkara
hazelnut and the pointed Sivri
hazelnut.
While the Tombul is susceptible
to spring frosts and big bud mites,
the pointed Sivri hazelnut — a
novelty to North America — is
resistant to pests and diseases and
to spring frosts.
Ashing disease and brown
“skunk,” which dries out trees
and can stop production for a sea-
son, are other threats to the coun-
try’s hazelnut crop, though Fisko-
birlik had no statistics on losses
Despite the mechanization of
hazelnut harvests in other parts
of Turkey and of the world, Gire-
sun and Ordu residents still col-
lect filberts the way they have for
thousands of years. Most of the
orchards have been in families for
generations, Ogutken said. Locals
and workers, who migrate from
southeast Turkey for the harvest
season, hand-pick the nuts, collect-
ing them into baskets, said Gurhan
Eriş, whose family owns hazelnut
trees in Ordu.
A worker typically earns 120
Turkish Liras — $21 — per day,
making handpicking more expen-
sive than mechanized production,
Ogutken said.
A machine can collect roughly
six times the amount of nuts as
pickers, he said.
“When you pay for the machine,
you pay only once, and it gets your
money back in five years,” he said.
Farmers in Ordu and Gire-
sun stick to this ancient method
of harvest because the trees grow
on steep slopes, unconducive to
sweeping machines and other types
of automation, said Aslan Karaca,
a retired primary teacher who has a
hazelnut orchard in Giresun.
“The geographical conditions
are harsh,” said Karaca, whose
hazelnut orchards have been in his
family for generations. “The ter-
rain is rough and steep. There are
not roads everywhere.”
In some villages such as Bulan-
cak in Giresun, where Eriş lives,
producers prefer to allow the hazel-
nuts to drop from their branches
and then collect the nuts from the
ground.
Shaking the tree to harvest the
nuts is a method used in north-
western Turkish provinces such as
Sakarya, Duzce and Kocaeli, Eriş
said.
In August of each year, farm-
ers use every possible flat surface
to dry the harvested hazelnuts,
including driveways, sidewalks
and as in Bulancak, school parking
lots. Once the husks turn brown,
usually after four to five days,
farmers rent what they call a “peel-
ing machine,” which vacuums the
nuts into a long tube and removes
the husks, said Ihsan Bulent Yuce,
Eris’ uncle, who is a co-owner of
an orchard in Ordu.
The machine costs about 200 to
240 Turkish Liras — $34 to $41 —
per hour, Yuce said.
The peeled nuts, still in their
shell, are then laid out to dry
for another three to seven days,
depending on the weather, before
they are delivered to markets or
processing plants, he said.
Most nuts go to EU
More than 75% of Turkish
hazelnut exports go to the Euro-
pean Union, according to August
statistics from the Black Sea
Hazelnut and Products Exporters’
Union.
About 42.7% of those exports
were processed products while the
rest were raw nuts, the exporters’
union reported.
About 90% of residents in Ordu
and Giresun have a direct connec-
tion with the hazelnut industry,
said Yaman, the nut and seed bro-
ker from Giresun.
In the city center of Giresun,
the largest city in the province of
the same name, stands a statue of a
man and a woman carrying a giant
filbert still inside its husk, on the
top of their heads.
In the Turkish culture, holding
something on top of one’s head is a
gesture and expression of respect,
Yaman said.
“In our culture … a guest’s
place is at the top of our head; our
mother’s place is at the top of the
head of her sons and daughters,”
Yaman said.
The hazelnut, in kind, is eco-
nomically at the “top of the head”
of Giresun and Ordu residents, he
said.
“Our main earnings come from
the hazelnut. We are able to pro-
vide education for our children,
health and food by the hazelnut,”
Yaman said.
Gurhan Eris of Bulancak, Tur-
key, and Engin Esen of Istanbul
translated during interviews for
this story.
Phylloxera: ‘It’s easier to address it through rootstocks over a long period of time’
Continued from Page 1
Grape quality and pro-
duction can be maintained
in affected vineyards by
“pushing” vines with more
water and fertilizer, though
such practices cannot ward
off the plant’s eventual
demise forever, Hoheisel
said.
The long-term solution is
to replant vineyard blocks
with varieties that have been
grafted onto native North
American grape rootstocks,
which are able to tolerate
phylloxera, she said.
“If you have, vine-
yards can stay profitable
and you can manage it for
quite some time,” Hoheisel
said. “It’s easier to address
it through rootstocks over a
long period of time.”
Phylloxera proved dev-
astating to the French wine
industry in the 1800s before
grafted rootstocks were
identified as a solution, said
Buckley of WSDA.
With many vineyards
in Washington reaching
40-50 years since planting,
grape growers will need to
examine adopting grafted
rootstocks if they’re suf-
ficiently afflicted with the
pest, she said.
“The industry here is at
an age that they’re starting
to replace vineyards any-
way,” Buckley said.
The pest has kept a low
enough profile in Washing-
ton that some grape grow-
ers were likely unaware
that it’s a quarantine pest
and that they’re required to
buy grapevines from nurs-
eries that have certified as
being free of the insect, she
said.
In sandier soils, grow-
ers may be able to continue
planting self-rooted grape
varieties because the pest
may not be able to build
up populations enough
to become problematic,
Buckley said. “Basically,
we’re going to be doing a
lot more research on this.”
It’s well known that
“bootleg or suitcase plants”
have come into Washing-
ton, so the situation high-
lights the need to be vig-
ilant about disease, said
Scharlau of the Washington
Winegrowers Association.
Apart from buying certi-
fied plants, growers should
control access to their
vineyards, restrict vehi-
cle travel to paved roads,
avoid sharing field equip-
ment and ensure grape bins
are cleaned from soil, she
said.
“This is an opportunity
to talk about best manage-
ment practices,” Scharlau
said.