A Quarter of theWorld’s Hazelnuts GoTowards MakingNutella

Nutella. Its that creamy, rich chocolate
hazelnut spread that makes you want to
gobble it up pronto. And like every
successful franchise, the beginnings of
Nutella were very humble. During the
Second World War, Chocolate
maker Ferrero faced a shortage of
cocoa so to make do he introduced
hazelnuts in to his recipe. Needless to
say this flavor caught on and was
refined in to the creamy goodness you
eat today.

Now, the opposite is happening. The
rest of the world might face a shortage
of hazelnuts because of Nutella. You
see most of the hazelnuts that Nutella
uses are grown in one specific location,
the rising steep slopes on the shores of
the Black Sea in Turkey.
Karim Azzaoui, the Vice President of
Sales for BALSU, USA which imports
hazelnuts to America, says that the
Turkish families that grow the nuts
follow a very traditional way of life.
They’ve been handpicking these nuts for
2000 years and, it seems, will continue
to do so.

Now Nutella purchases a hundred
thousand tonnes of hazelnuts every
year, approximately a quarter of the
world’s production, and that drives up
the price. This year, due to a late frost
in Turkey, the hazelnut blossoms froze
and the price went up 60%. Now the
race is on to find other places to grow
this dry fruit. You’ll find farms in Chile
and Australia and now, even in the
Northeastern United States.

A disease called the Eastern Filbert
Blight (EFB) would kill off the hazelnut
crop in Northeastern USA, but scientists
are quickly developing ways to counter
that. Some efforts are bearing fruit
(pun intended) at Rutgers University in
a project headed by Thomas Molnar, a
plant biologist. Molnar has set up
projects in Canada and the US to
breed EFB resistant strains of hazelnut
crop.