2015 Crop Forecast, how they did it

The 2015 Oregon Hazelnut Production Forecast was released late August. Hazelnuts are Oregon’s 8th leading producing commodity. The USDA performed a series of tests to gather information about the upcoming crop. Here’s how they conducted the survey:

• Sample size was 300 orchards, 282 were submitted. Samples trees and branches were picked at random.

• Nuts from each orchard were taken, counted and subsampled.

• Husks were pealed away.

• Hazelnuts were sized.

• Nuts were then cracked and weighed and bad ones were discarded.

• There were 105,104 nuts picked, with 26,108 subsampled. Out of the subsamples, 22,777 tested as good (87.2%).

• USDA projects a crop of 39,000 tons, a 4% increase from last year’s 37,500.

• The average dry rate was 3.17 grams per nut compared to last years 3.25 grams.