Macadamia Nuts

choi

Mike Cherney, Oh, Nuts!  The Macadamias Are Stuck; Trendy snacks irk farmers who try to pry them from trees. Wall Street Journal, July 6, 2017 (front page).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/her ... of-trees-1499267296
http://www.cetusnews.com/life/He ... es-.Bkx5u7YqVZ.html

Quote:

"Typically many of the nuts fall naturally, but last year Mr [Noah] Seccombe], a 39-year-old macadamia farmer in eastern Australia,] said 30% of the crop of some trees was stuck on the branch [in September].

"Demand for Macadamia nuts, native to Australia, has soared as consumers seek more natural alternative to processed snacks. Over the past decade, global production of macadamias, which are also used in trendy skin creams, is up some 80%, says the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council. In Australia, the world’s biggest macadamia producer, prices have roughly doubled in recent years.

"Other tree-nut industries cracked this problem years ago. Almond farmers, for example, use machines that grab the trunks with a claw-like appendage, shake the tree and knock out the nuts. Macadamia farmers are skeptical. They are worried their tree, a subtropical rain-forest species, can't withstand the abuse like an almond tree

"In Australia, macadamia nuts typically start dropping in February [late summer in southern hemisphere] and keep falling for about six months. A plant hormone can be used to speed up the fall, but many farmers don’t like it. It is then a race to pick the nuts from the ground, generally with machine harvesters, before rainstorms wash them away or pests eat them.

Note:
(a) The report is locked behind pay wall. No worry, nonetheless. There is no need to read the rest, which is about various methods have been tried without success, to dislodge the nut (which "is worth a lot of money.".
(b) Macadamia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macadamia
(a genus of four species of trees indigenous to Australia (and introduced to Hawaii);  evergreen; "The German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller gave the genus the name Macadamia in 1857 in honour of the Scottish-Australian * * * John Macadam")