As I walk the walnuts - 10

As I walk the walnuts I reflect on the progress we have made in the last five years and my hopes for this one. All of the technological components are beginning to come together, albeit at different rates, and in spite of glimpses of future bottlenecks that seem to parallel what our climate throws at us, adding to the challenges of nut production so far north, we have the market waiting for what we can supply, so no fears there.

Useful US studies show that we import about $110 m annually of tree nut products from the US alone (the study was commissioned to find this out). I raise gales of laughter when I tell my collaborators that I’d be happy with 1% of that market, but the truth is that if we could achieve a gross return of $25,000 annually to 40 landowners, we’d be well on the road to a sustainable partial livelihood across the region, which is far preferable to one or two producers making greater gains.

But this still requires effort, and perhaps more than we have brought to the task so far. I shall be egging my collaborators on even more, trying to increase the range of skills we bring to the questions that remain, showing why the biological issues of productivity parallel the technological challenges of bringing a product to market. I am more convinced than ever that BNP was, happily, a viable strategy, and that it is easily replicable on a wider scale. But there is a lot of black walnut currently out there on the landscape, and we need to harness this resource, as well, to add to the B of BNP and to our bottom line.

I see as a challenge now, how to add a focus on shell usage as a biofuel. With one of the highest energy densities in natural by-products, and at about 75% of our physical output, shell can be (should be) part of our market strategy, and while I am aware of its usage as an abrasive, amongst other things, in our climate this energy density cries out for a different end-use. We are in the age of renewable energy. Not exploring this would be like throwing the baby out with the bath-water.