The constant explosive snapping of walnut shells underfoot makes it feel like Deepavali has come early to this part of Hughson, California, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley.
“Don’t worry about stepping on a few walnuts, even though this is harvest season,” says Aaron Martella, president, Grower Direct Nut Company, as he guides an international team of media representatives through his family-owned commercial orchard and nut processing facility. It’s harvest week and the California Walnut Commission has a packed schedule.
With the United States ranked as the world’s second-biggest producer of walnuts (next to China), the CWC, which groups over 4,800 growers and 100 handlers (marketers) of the tree nut, is hoping to make a crackling headway in the search for new consumers.
California, which has approximately 3,50,000 acres devoted to walnut orchards, accounts for 99% of America’s domestic supply and 66% of the world trade.
Aaron Martella, president, Grower Direct Nut Company, at his walnut farm in Hughson, California. Nahla Nainar | Photo Credit: NahlaNainar
“This has been the cheapest time for walnuts in 10-15 years, and we are hoping the market will catch fire,” says Martella. CWC figures indicate the 2018-19 crop to be 625,000 metric tonnes, which is 10% more than last year. Martella’s 15-acre Hughson processing facility is aiming to hit the 100-million-tonne mark this year.
Automated agriculture
As visitors crunch their way through the orchard, which has approximately 150 trees of the Howard variety to the acre, a vehicle called the ‘shaker’ gets to work. Holding the lower half of the trunk in the grip of a mechanical arm, the operator literally shakes down a cascade of walnut fruits and nuts in a noisy rumble.
The trees start bearing fruit from the fifth to seventh year of their planting, and have an average life of 25-40 years, though in the wild, they can live for up to a century. Martella’s farm, like the other orchards in the vicinity, is watered through drip irrigation from an early 20th Century canal fed by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada mountains.
From harvesting to processing, and the fake hawk that screeches at regular intervals to keep other birds from raiding the storage area, nearly every step in Grower Direct is automated. Once the shaker has done its work, another heavy vehicle called the ‘sweeper’ is driven down each lane four times, blowing leaves and nuts into neat piles on the side.
Labourers step in once the initial dehydration and fumigation is over. “Though we remove the kernels from the shells with the help of a laser tool, we need the human touch to sort out the stock and package it,” says Martella.
The inedible fruit hull goes back into the field as fertiliser. “Even after dehydration, we test the shells for moisture before processing. It’s very dangerous to have moist walnuts, because they can catch fire or go bad,” he adds.
Known to be among the oldest tree food, with a cultivation history going back to 10,000 BC, walnuts were initially grown in Central Asia, the Himalayas and Eastern Europe. They were brought to California by Franciscan priests in the 1700s.
A growing market
With a content of 2.5 grams per ounce of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), the walnut is a plant-based source of Omega 3 fatty acid. Ironically, this also makes the nut very vulnerable to oxidation and rancidity.
“After the final harvest, we have to dehydrate and process the walnuts within 36 hours, so that they can have a shelf life of at least a year for commercial use,” says Martella.
In India, walnuts are grown in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal, and according to the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), the country exported 3595.69 metric tonnes of its produce in 2017-18 to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Germany and Egypt.
“India is a very important market for us, even though we entered it only as recently as five years ago,” says Pamela Graviet, senior marketing director, international, CWC. “It is among our top 15 export markets, and given the size of the population, and the love of nuts and dried fruit here, we anticipate that over the next few years, India would be in the top five.”
While the price of California walnuts in India remains high (approximately ₹600 to ₹1,130 for 500 grams, depending on quality), which makes them a luxury for most Indians, bodies like the CWC hope that its nutritious quality, combined with a policy change over high import duties, will eventually reduce costs.
“Walnuts are mostly seen as a snack in India, which is not wrong, but we’d like to show that they can be used in other ways too, perhaps in traditional recipes,” says Graviet. “You have to in a way, create a new food tradition around walnuts.”
The writer was in the US on invitation from California Walnut Commission.