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Worldwide shortage of macadamia nuts


BrianMDelaney

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  • 3 months later...

Hey everyone. Anyone out there happen to have a favorite online nut source that currently has Macadamia nuts (preferably organic) in stock? Apparently there's a worldwide shortage, but I'm running out.

 

Thanks,

Brian

 

Hi Brian, kindly get in touch with me on esther.velle@y-notevents.com

What volumes are you looking at and how often?

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest chris smart

Brian how many pounds are you looking for? I represent my family's organic mac nut farm in Hawaii on the island of maui and we have plenty of USDA certified organic mac nuts. we have shelled wholekernel and bits as well.

 

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  • 4 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Let me jump in to advise people to contact any prospective vendor and ask them for the harvest date (not the "best by" date, which is meaningless) on any nuts before buying them. Raw nuts — even relatively durable, high-MUFA, low-PUFA ones — are at their best for only a few months, a year at the outside if they're packaged and stored well (which most are not) or longer if they're kept in the freezer. If a vendor is transparent and legitimate, they will have and readily supply this info. If you eat nuts in a serious way, I'd advise finding out when a reliable vendor gets the harvest of your main nut type in each year, making a once-annual bulk purchase as quickly as you can after the new crop is in, and then packing them into fridge and freezer and eating them in that order. (I recognize that this is likely impossible for some, especially if they live on three continents ;) ).

 

I've been doing this for years, but having upped my nut intake recently and realizing that my supply was going to run short, I went to make another purchase. Instead of just more hazelnuts (my staple nut), I decided that I also wanted some macadamias, and was surprised by the price (even after having read about the shortage described here). I decided to do a bit of shopping, and lo and behold found a much cheaper source: $50 for 5 lbs instead of $80. I contacted them to find out about harvest date, and got voicemail; I left a message, and when I didn't hear back I phoned again. The person at the other end said they were good until January of 2017. This is already a stretch, but wouldn't be an outrageous date to put as "best by" if they were very recently harvested. I clarified that I was after the harvest date rather than the "best by" date, and she was baffled that I would be asking; she said she didn't have that info and would have to check with the owner and get back to me.

 

When no one replied after a couple of days, I phoned again and was told he didn't have the info and that she would have to contact "the manufacturer." Again hearing nothing for a couple of days, I phoned again; the person I had been dealing with was unavailable, and when I repeated my question to the person with whom I left a message for her, this second person was also mystified that someone would ask!

 

After three weeks of hounding these people (by which point I had decided I didn't want to deal with them and was just being bloody-minded), I finally got out of them (when I called them again — not by them finally returning a phone call) that they had been harvested in June of 2013 in Kenya — which would then mean they would have been shipped, in a process probably taking weeks, in the hot Northern Hemisphere summer sun to reach greater Los Angeles (where the vendor is located). And they're claiming a "best by" date of January 2017 three and a half years after a summer harvest! Somehow, I have a feeling they don't store and ship under liquid nitrogen ;) .

 

In the meantime, I contacted my regular vendor (Nuts.com), who readily supplied the harvest date as they always do (October 2014), and told me that even better, macadamia trees yield a crop every eight months, so they'd have fresh nuts in 2-3 months. I decided to place a small order immediately and then order more when the new crop comes in: bad on shipping costs, esp. for a product that's already quite expensive, but worth it for freshness (and even if you decide it's not 2014/09 is a hell of a lot better than 2013/06 from a dodgy operator). I also know from experience and previous inquiries that their packaging is heavy-weight, their big 25 lb cases are stored in an inner vacuum-sealed bag and an outer protective one, and IIRC that they're kept in a cool warehouse.

 

A shout-out to Nuts.com (and no, I have zero financial or other conflicts of interest — don't even know the owners). And caveat nux emptor!

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First: Arg! I'm still not getting notifications of replies to threads I've participated in.

 

Main point: Thanks, Michael, for the critical info! Years-old nuts -- yikes!

 

I'd been insisting on getting harvest dates (more important that date of pressing) for olive oil, but for some (silly!) reason hadn't thought about it in connection with nuts. I've been buying from Living Nutz for various reasons, and have generally had a feeling of trust about their operation, and decided (b/c I have enough to think about...) not to dig further into their operation ("feeling of trust", is, I know, by no means reliable...). But I will have to contact them about harvest dates next time I order.

 

Nuts.com supplies the harvest date, but only if you ask? I don't see a harvest date here, for ex:

 

https://nuts.com/nuts/almonds/raw-no-shell.html

 

One of the (many) things I like about Amphora Nueva is that they list harvest dates for the oils. No need to ask.

 

Brian

 

P.S. [Later edit.] Now I remember why I chose Living Nutz: I compared them with other online nut sites, including nuts.com, and, of those that felt/seemed trustworthy, Living Nutz had the best prices. Just did a few comparisons: the nuts I buy are $1-3/lb. cheaper at Living Nutz than at nuts.com, and shipping is about the same.

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Hi Brian,

 

Long time reader, first time poster :).

 

I too want to give a big thumbs up to nuts.com. Although I don't eat macadamias, I've been buying a variety of nuts and seeds from them for years, and have always been very pleased with the quality and the service they provide. Yes, they are a little more expensive than other sources, but as you're discovering, sometimes you get what you pay for.

 

--Dean

 

P.S. One technical question about this forum interface. How do I insert an image from my hard drive into a post? I tried to compose a post a while back (can't even remember the topic now), but gave up when I couldn't figure out how to insert the images I wanted to.

 

Dean's first post

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There actually is a "Gallery" function deals with this and that works quite well from my use in another forum -- it just hasn't been enabled: Tim has some concerns about it. We should probably be discussing this in "Meta" -- but where's that? The Administrative Issues area seems most appropriate, but "Viewable only to moderators and administrators".

 

(More later on this and also about your earlier questions, Brian. Dean: great to have your on board -- please post more!).

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First: Arg! I'm still not getting notifications of replies to threads I've participated in.

IIRC, you have to set your user prefs to do this; otherwise, IIRC, you only get subscribed to invididual threads & Fora to which you actively subscribe.

 

Nuts.com supplies the harvest date, but only if you ask?

Yes, correct. I doubt they want to make a big deal of it: probably relatively few customers are even thinking about it, and once educated they become pests ;) . It would be especially difficult for them (Nuts.com) if they were getting towards the last n bushels of nuts from a previous year's crop and couldn't sell them because people got wise and delayed making purchases until the new stuff was available -- which would then in turn delay the date at which they could begin selling the new stuff, bumping back date at which they sell out of it, either creating a feed-forward or forcing them to just not sell as much to time the sale of the latest crop to the expected harvest of the next.

 

(OTOH, despite it not being out "for the record," I'm confident that they're not making it up: each year I start asking about hazelnuts a bit early, and most years they've put me off for at least a couple of weeks and once for over a month).

 

One of the (many) things I like about Amphora Nueva is that they list harvest dates for the oils. No need to ask.

Amphora (and their supplier, Veronica Foods) rulz OK ;).

 

Now I remember why I chose Living Nutz: I compared them with other online nut sites, including nuts.com, and, of those that felt/seemed trustworthy, Living Nutz had the best prices. Just did a few comparisons: the nuts I buy are $1-3/lb. cheaper at Living Nutz than at nuts.com, and shipping is about the same.

Good to know. Let us know the results of your inquiries re: harvest dates, and I may consider giving them a try this fall.

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Brian how many pounds are you looking for? I represent my family's organic mac nut farm in Hawaii on the island of maui and we have plenty of USDA certified organic mac nuts. we have shelled wholekernel and bits as well.

 

Brian how many pounds are you looking for? I represent my family's organic mac nut farm in Hawaii on the island of maui and we have plenty of USDA certified organic mac nuts. we have shelled wholekernel and bits as well.

Hi Chris!

 

I'd be interested in ordering Macadamias from you -- but you didn't leave any contact information.  If you get this, please email me back.

 

Thanks,

 

  -- Saul

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  • 1 month later...

On the question of the shelf life of raw nuts, I've recently come across a review by the UC Davis agricultural extension on "Estimates of Shelf-life of Raw Nuts Held at Different Temperatures." It confirms that even by basic quality parameters (ie, not maniacal health-nut worries about the very last molecule of peroxidized fat or acrylamide), the shelf-life of raw nuts at "cool, dark place" temperature (20°C/(68°F)

is never more than 6 months, and that progressively lowering the temperature to "autumn morning" (10°C/50°F), freezing (0°C/32°F), and slightly-less-than-home-freezer (-10°C/-14°F) temperatures each extends shelf life by months. Going the opposite way (from -10 to 20ºC), the shelf-life for macs falls from 24 mo to 12, 12, and 5 mo with rising temp, and is only 0.75 mo at 30ºC/86ºF. 

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First: Arg! I'm still not getting notifications of replies to threads I've participated in.

IIRC, you have to set your user prefs to do this; otherwise, IIRC, you only get subscribed to invididual threads & Fora to which you actively subscribe.

 

Have done. No effect....

 
 
Still haven't gotten around to asking about harvest dates from Living Nutz, but I will within a couple weeks!
 
Brian
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