Low prices hurt Georgian nut farmers

The price Georgian farmers expect to fetch for this season’s nut harvest is down owing to Turkey’s record harvest of nuts—about one million tons—and a bumper harvest in Georgia.

Nuts, particularly walnuts and hazelnuts, have long since been a staple of Georgia’s exported goods, typically one of its top ten exports.

Coupled with steep transportation costs, the strengthening of national currency has left nuts exporters puzzling over ways to balance these new figures against international market values. One strategy is to establish direct sales points in every village, thus eliminating any intermediary expenses accrued in shuttling the product to the major cities.

It is expected that Georgia will harvest approximately 35–40 000 tons of nuts this season, according to the newspaper Ekonomikuri Palitra. The international price for this product has gone down from seven to four dollars per kilo.