ANDREA DAI

09/10/2019 - It was 80 degrees in the early afternoon Tuesday, but some families were already deciding what’s for dinner. 

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They stopped by a produce stand located in the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon. While the little boy was riding on the mechanical bull and shouting “Yee-haw!”, like a Western cowboy on the field, his mother was walking back and forth between the fruits and vegetables sections, and that was when she saw a friendly face.

 

“Welcome to Detering Orchards! What can I get for you?” asked the woman. 

 

That’s Ella Jones, the 24-year-old assistant retail manager, who is working her fifth season at the Detering Orchards.

 

“This is something I never thought I would be doing,” said Jones. Graduating with a bachelor's degree in anthropology at the University of Oregon, Jones has dedicated herself to a field that is completely unrelated to her study. “Originally, I was just here for a summer job, but it is just super fun to work with the crops and the people here,” she said. 

 

Especially, the farm she works at - is not just a regular one.

 

Detering Orchards is a historic family-owned farm which opened back in 1934. It started as a 40-acre truck farm, growing a variety of produce for sale in nearby Eugene or their fruit stand. As the business kept expanding, now it has become five times bigger, with more than 40 crops on the field, such as apples, peaches, blueberries, tomatoes, and many others. With so many products mixed in, it aims at providing customers with fresh, top-quality farm food as both harvested and U-pick, which invites people to pick their own products.

 

But since the new owner, Stephen Demergasso, took over the orchards in 2017, the farm has gotten much busier. He introduced a new life – hazelnuts, one of the most lucrative economic crops in Oregon, to the old farm. It does promise a new vision for the orchards; however, it also drags it into the tug and war between the world’s two largest economies, the U.S., and China.

 

“A lot of farmers want to do it [hazelnut] here, so I thought, why don't we?” said Demergasso. Oregon has been known globally as a premier hazelnut producer. The state produces almost a hundred percent of all the hazelnuts grown in the U.S., with farmers harvesting 37,000 acres in 2017, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. The hazelnut industry was valued at $73.6 million, and over half of the yields were contributed by exports. 

 

“That is our new opportunity. We try to bring our business from local to global,” said Jones. She also said that she had great confidence in her new boss. Having helped with his family’s hazelnut orchard at a young age, Demergasso has had proficient farming experience. He said he made up his mind as soon as he purchased the orchards, ripped out 60 acres of old apple and cherry trees and replaced them with hazelnuts, in hope of bringing more variety and further expanding themselves into the global market. 

 

Traditionally, Detering Orchards has been relying heavily on the local market, particularly in the direct-to-consumer channel. Jones estimated that around 60% of their sales came from farm retails, while the rest was counting on the wholesale. Detering has cooperated with Market of Choice in Eugene and Corvallis to deliver fresh produce in summer, but most of the customers still prefer to come to the stand, Jones added. 

 

“There is always a wide variety of selection here,” said Carol Spulnik, who had bought two boxes of peaches and one box of pears from the orchards. She and her husband live along the coast, but they decided to drive nearly two hours all the way up here. “I am here for the freshness. I like farm-to-table food.”

 

Literally, like the phrase may suggest, farm-to-table is to bring food from the farm to your table, or in broader terms, to the consumer. The concept has grown in popularity in recent years, as people are becoming increasingly concerned about what they eat, and it has created new opportunities for local farms. 

 

In Oregon, about 12% of farms – more than double the national rate – engage in direct-to-consumer marketing, with sales of over $53 million from an estimated 4,252 farms in 2015, according to a report by Oregon State University. It enables farmers to develop a personal relationship with their customers, cultivate brand loyalty with the farms, and what's more important, provide consumers access to locally grown, fresh products.

 

“Here, you can know where your food comes from, take a look at the field that grows your food. No middleman, no redundant process, it goes directly from the farm to you,” said Jones. Apparently, Spulnik was not the only one who took advantage of the new lifestyle. Jones said she had seldom shopped at the grocery stores since she started working here, as she could get almost everything fresh from the farms. “Everybody likes it [food] fresh, and we have it.”

 

Depending on the weather, Detering Orchards usually opens its produce stand from June to December every year. But besides just purchasing food straight from the farm, Jones also highly recommends her customers to do the harvest themselves, that is, U-pick, another growing movement in farm direct marketing. “The best part here is that you can not only see your food being freshly harvested by us. You can pick your own,” said Jones. 

 

Alone for all registered farms on Oregon's Bounty Farm Stand Guide, you can already find nearly 300 listings of U-pick farms in the area. With such competition, Detering Orchards sets itself apart from the rivals with its prominence of varieties, and they have successfully reached out to their clientele, like Glinda Black, 72, who has been a regular to Detering Orchards for over 10 years. “We are here for the squashes. That is what most people coming here for,” said Black, even though she might have come too early, as the pumpkin season usually kicks off in late September and October, which is, as well, the busiest time for Jones. 

 

“We do about three-quarters of our annual sales in this very single month [October],” said Jones. Nearly two months away from Halloween, the leaves are still green, but she and her team are already geared up for the upcoming fall. They started to decorate the farms, planning a bunch of harvest-related activities, what with pumpkin patches, field trips for children, and more entertainment. “People know our name. There are going to be a lot of them coming. It is a little bit of pressure of being here, because if I mess up, the hundred-year reputation is on me,” she said. 

 

She said she was not really concerned that she might fail at meeting costumers’ expectations on the grand event, but something more serious. The escalating trade war between the U.S. and China is creating a big uncertainty for her team and their new business, hazelnuts.

 

Oregon exports more than 60% of its hazelnut production in the shell to all over the world, in which China plays an essential role. According to the annual report published by Oregon Hazelnuts and Hazelnuts Marketing Board, in 2018-2019, China took up 51% of total in-shell hazelnuts exports, followed by Vietnam, 25.1%, and Hong Kong, 17.5%, respectively. “But eventually, these will be transshipped to China,” said Polly Owen, the research director at Oregon Hazelnut Industry Office. She pointed out that the hazelnuts shipping to China’s neighboring countries and regions were just to avoid the high tariff. In other words, China might have accounted for over 90% of the market. 

 

“So now, we are desperate finding a new market,” said Jones. As the battle between Washington and Beijing keeps raging, it has cast a shadow over Detering Orchards and other Oregon hazelnut growers. Previously, U.S. hazelnuts carried a 25% tariff plus a 10% value-added tax to China. Now, with the strain in trade relations of the two countries, China has tacked an additional 25% tariff and raised the value-added tax by 5%– which makes the total now 65% – on U.S. hazelnuts. Beijing even cut off secondary routes through Vietnam and Hong Kong that Oregon farmers had used to circumvent the tariffs, putting them under an immense amount of pressure.

 

Fortunately, Jones said she would not sell any hazelnut in 2019, because it usually took up three to four years for hazelnut trees ready for production, but she was still worried about that the war may never end, or more possibly, last through 2020 presidential election, when the orchards will reap their very first hazelnut. “Corns, steels, soybeans, those are the main products that are going to determine the negotiation. Hazelnuts are more like by-product [in export]. We have really no power.” 

 

Moreover, the trade war is not the only thing that bothers her. An economic turmoil in another country could pose the same, or even larger threat to the industry.

 

“Anything happens globally, impacts us majorly,” said Jones, referring to the Trump administration's sanctions on Turkey in August 2018, which depreciated Turkish Lira at almost half its value overnight. Turkey, the largest supplier of hazelnuts, contributes three-quarters of the world's hazelnuts production. The massive currency devaluation would dramatically reduce the cost of Turkish hazelnuts, thus undercut prices worldwide and crowd out competitors like Oregon. “Oregonian hazelnuts are of better quality, I guarantee, but if the price discrepancy goes too far, we will suffer,” she said.

 

However, in spite of so many challenges, it is still too early to tell what will happen in the next harvest season. “It might get worse, or get better, who knows. Nobody knows the price until we harvest,” said Jones. “It is unpredictable, but it is exactly the fun part of farming.”