WORKING TOGETHER (OR NOT): THE FUTURE OF THE HAZELNUT

75% of the world's hazelnuts are grown in a small region of northern Turkey abutting the Black Sea. But as the old system of harvesting erodes, prices fall and climate change threatens, does this herald the end of pralines and chocolate truffles?

"Ever since I was a child hazelnut picking has been a festive time for us". Erol Acartürk, a 51 year old company director, describes how every year during August family members, friends and neighbours would gather from all over Turkey often lodging ten to a room, to play, to gossip, and to collect hazelnuts from the steep slopes of the Canik and Giresun hills that rise up behind the turquoise calm of the Black Sea. At the end of the harvest, Erol recalls, household bills would be paid, weddings would take place, and debts would be serviced.

There's a word in Turkish: "imece" which means mutual aid, to help one another. It stems from old forms of social solidarity and collective labour - especially linked to rural life. As a concept “mutual aid” has enjoyed broad practical and theoretical support. Since the Neolithic revolution collective farming has evolved and facilitated rapid opportunistic harvesting, especially in the absence of machinery. The rice-growing regions of southern Bangladesh, the potato harvesting areas of the Peruvian and Bolivian altiplano and farming practice in Cuba and Belarus are examples of where such systems exist today.

The Russian theorist Peter Kropotkin wrote an important treatise on the subject in 1902: "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution". Kropotkin set out to demonstrate that the "unsociable species was destined to decay", arguing that interpersonal competition was less efficient than collaborative venture based on mutual support.

Most of the world's hazelnuts grow on a narrow strip of hill-country from the Silk Road port of Trabzon to Samsun – a distance of 200 miles. While hazel normally grows as an understorey tree in many of Europe's great forests, along Turkey’s Black Sea coast it’s the dominant species of the upland. Its recent extended cultivation has progressed, archaeologists now believe, from an original and extensive wild outcrop of hazel that probably re-inhabited the hills after the last Ice Age. So it’s possible that the gruesome Amazons – the legendary female warriors that Homer described in The Iliad - snacked on them whilst refilling their quivers. This was their country.

Today in the region of Ordu, that undulates for a quarter of a million hectares, 32% of the entire landmass is covered in hazel. And in Giresun, where the world’s finest-tasting hazelnuts are grown, 17% of the land area is unmixed hazelnut. Below the hills along Euroroute 70 as it snakes along the southern coast of the Black Sea, hazelnuts with and without their husks dry in the sun soaking up the last of the summer before the intense storms that ravage the Black Sea coast in late August turn the hills to mud and wash the last vestiges of hazelnut into the sea. In sheltered space factories large and small process the produce of the hills, turning shelled nuts into hazelnut paste, oil and whole roasted kernels.

Until five years ago there was considerable optimism in the hazel groves. Farm gate prices, controlled by the government, were adequate. Hazelnuts reached a peak price of U$5 per kilo. However, the following year the price slumped to U$1 per kilo and then slowly edged back to U$2.50 per kilo in late 2006. There were demonstrations in the streets of Ordu and protests as far as Ankara. At the same time as villagers stopped collecting hazelnuts (unable to rent the machinery to harvest the nuts) the "imece" system collapsed. It collapsed because families found it harder to join together in the way they had in the past and because the economy had drained out of the industry.

Today the "imece" system has been replaced on virtually all farms by contract labour that is organised by the local government. Georgians from Batumi, Kurds from eastern Anatolia and only a few locals struggle up the hills to do the harvesting now. It's a tough twelve hour day, especially so during the fasting time of Ramadan. Pay ranges from 40 Turkish Lira an hour for Georgians (who know the work well), to 25 Turkish Lira for Kurds (who – so they say - don't). The families no longer gather as they did, and as more hazelnuts are cultivated in Italy (producing about 20% of the world’s hazelnuts) and the United States, and as the hazelnut continues to function as a political football in Turkey, there's a concern that the whole ancient tradition of the Black Sea hills may collapse.

A further pressure on the economic viability of hazelnut production is the changing demography of the region. The population has increased threefold over the 40 years since Erol’s childhood. And with population increase has come land subdivision. Now the average holding for an individual is around 5 hectares – perhaps 20 trees. And behind the harsh economic landscape there's potentially a bigger problem waiting: rapid erosion of the hills due to more intense rainfall events, a function of climate change.

With all this pessimism over the future of the hazelnut what can save its humble economy? While speaking with Erol Acartürk I was reminded of conversations I'd had with Carlo Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food Movement in Italy. Petrini's movement struggled to protect the value of regional produce and local farming systems, first in Italy, and then internationally. Perhaps, I thought, Turkey needs a charismatic figure to force us to recognize the value in the food we eat. Today the hazelnut is not viewed as an important product in Turkey, in its homeland. That should change.

© Stuart Franklin 2010