Oregon is Full of Nuts
A few months back, The Salt Lake Tribune contained an insightful article on the challenges faced by Oregon's hazelnut farmers as they attempt to stimulate demand for their product. Among the hurdles they face is foreign competition, the hazelnut's peculiar boom-bust growing cycle, a loss of acreage to blight, a long-standing and deeply entrenched preference among American consumers for peanuts, and concerns on the part of cereal and bread manufacturers about the growers' ability of supply to keep pace with potential demand.
Perhaps the most interesting and ironic part of the story is the inability of hazelnut growers to profit from the one hazelnut product that American's really love- hazelnut flavored coffee. According to the article, hazelnut coffee ranks as the second most popular coffee flavoring, right behind vanilla. Unfortunately for hazelnut farmers, the flavoring is not made from real hazelnuts. This fact has not discouraged Vicki Nesper, marketing director of the Jersey City-based Hazelnut Council (Jersey City!?):
''(The coffee flavoring is) artificial,'' said Nesper. ''But we want to share the knowledge with Americans that if they like it in their coffee, then they might like real hazelnuts in other products, as well.''
Now I like the idea of trying to stimulate domestic demand for hazelnuts. But piggybacking off of demand for artificial hazelnut flavoring is a long shot, at best. The nuts are not a substitute or complement for the flavoring. Neither is a replecement for or factor of production of the other. Hazelnuts are just not what not springs to mind after you've had a caramel hazelnut, double shot, half-decaf, skinny latte- not even if you are a squirrel..
This post is linked at: Bacon Bits; Don Surber; Choose Life, and Basil's Blog and is included in the Bonfire of the Vanities.