Bruce Kaser, right, is a hazelnut grower and attorney who recently hosted an event for organic producers of the crop at his farm near Salem, Ore. Kaser is fighting a court battle against a USDA policy that he claims has allowed Turkish imports to undercut prices for domestic organic hazelnuts. (Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press)

Some folks just seem to insist on doing things the hard way.

Growing hazelnuts organically generally involves more labor, pricier inputs and lower yields, which isn’t necessarily unusual for organic crops.

But in the case of hazelnuts, their price is also suppressed by ostensibly “organic” imports from Turkey, greatly reducing the organic premium on which American growers typically rely to make ends meet.

So, if the money often isn’t worth the extra cost and effort of cultivating organic hazelnuts, why are some Oregon farmers still choosing to devote their orchards to organic production?

“I’d say half of it is the love of the challenge,” said David Stehman, an organic hazelnut grower with Meridian Orchards near Aurora, Ore.

A fondness for birds and wildlife was the major reason why Jim Birkemeier, the farm’s owner and Stehman’s father-in-law, switched to organic methods nearly three decades ago, he said.

The orchard has stuck with the organic system on principle, though the financial incentives have been undermined by relatively inexpensive Turkish hazelnuts that still carry the organic label, Stehman said.

“That is really hurting us as the cost of everything goes up. It’s difficult to compete with that,” he said. “The buyers are going for the cheaper nuts, nine times out of 10.”

For some growers, the prospect of brighter days ahead has convinced them to endure the difficult current economics, as their experience has borne out with other crops.

Producing organic blueberries also wasn’t particularly lucrative years ago, but it’s proven to be financially justified over the long term, said Dennis Carlson, who works for a group of agricultural investors in the Willamette Valley.

The investors are planning to grow organic hazelnuts after achieving profitability with organic blueberries, both for philosophical reasons and because they understand that economic turbulence is often a natural consequence of entering a young industry, Carlson said.

“They know that once this market gets up and going, we will be the early adopters,” he said.

Other organic hazelnut growers are avoiding mainstream sales channels, instead investing in value-added products they sell directly to consumers.

My Brothers’ Farm, an organic operation near Creswell, Ore., has focused on selling roasted hazelnuts online and at farmer’s markets after determining the wholesale market wouldn’t be viable.

“This isn’t going to pencil out, so how can we put in a little more work and make four or five times that much?” said Ben Larson, co-owner of the farm.

Though the operation is now “a little insulated” from the commodity price for organic hazelnuts, building a niche market required starting small and slowly acquiring new customers from year to year, Larson said.

From the agronomic perspective, the perceived challenges of organic production can be overcome if the operation is managed as an ecosystem, he said.

Conventional treatments often generate side-effects, which then require other treatments, while organic methods aren’t as likely to face that problem, Larson said. “It’s about living in harmony with nature instead of trying to fight it all the time.”

Even so, when organic farmers do encounter an insect or disease infestation, experts say they have fewer treatment alternatives than do conventional growers, and those that are available are often far more expensive.

For example, organic sprays to kill filbert worms cost roughly 10 times more than conventional insecticides registered for the pest, Stehman said.

“We have an option to deal with it, it’s just cost-prohibitive,” he said.

Copper remains an effective organically-approved fungicide for Eastern Filbert Blight, including a new mutant variety that’s overcome genetic resistance to the disease, said Nik Wiman, an Oregon State University orchard crops specialist.

However, using copper to treat bacterial blight could lead to an accumulation in the soil that’s harmful to the tree, he said.

Organic sprays meant to control suckers, which affect yields, are difficult to apply effectively, prompting many growers to stick with more labor-intensive hand pruning, Wiman said.

For nutrients, manure can be used instead of synthetic fertilizers, but it can lead to harmful phosphorous build-up in the soil and create food safety concerns during harvest, he said.

On the whole, the costs of organic treatments and intense management can add up to a burdensome level for growers competing with Turkish imports, Wiman said.

“Probably the margin is not enough to justify the additional expenses they incur,” he said.

While some hazelnut growers are finding ways to make the organic system work, experts say the lack of a substantial organic premium has definitely constrained the industry’s outlook.

Currently, Oregon hazelnut growers who sell into the mainstream wholesale market depend on only one processor: Cascade Foods of Albany, Ore.

“Everyone else, I believe, has tried it and got out of it,” said Jed White, the company’s production manager.

At this point, prices for organic hazelnuts tend to dissuade all but the most “diehard believers” from joining the industry, he said.

“Growers have asked me: Is it worth it?” White said. “I can’t tell you what to do.”

To maintain organic certification, the company must clean its processing equipment to handle organic hazelnuts separately from the conventional crop, he said.

Once that’s done, it only takes about a week to process its entire annual inventory of about 40 tons of merchantable organic hazelnuts — a tiny sliver of the 96,000 tons of hazelnuts grown in Oregon last year.

The humble scale and philosophical dedication of Oregon’s organic hazelnut growers harkens back to the early days of the organic agriculture movement, before major consumer brands and food manufacturers capitalized on organic labeling.

Unless domestic producers are shielded from the price effects of Turkish imports, though, the industry’s size will continue to be seriously inhibited, said Bruce Kaser, owner of Pratum Farm near Salem, Ore.

“If we do not address the Turkish situation, there will be no commercial organic growth. That’s where we are now,” said Kaser, who estimates that only about 1% of domestic hazelnuts are grown organically. “The bottom line is we have to make a reasonable profit at the end of the day.”

As a survivor of stomach cancer, Kaser said environmental and health implications have heavily influenced his decision to grow hazelnuts organically.

That said, it simply isn’t sustainable for organic hazelnuts to command a premium of only a few percentage points above the conventional crop, he said.

“That’s fundamentally what we’re trying to change,” he said.

Drawing upon his professional skills as an attorney, Kaser has been waging a one-man battle for the past three years against imports of Turkish hazelnuts, whose organic certification he considers deceptive.

He initially took his complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission, but when that proved fruitless, Kaser filed a lawsuit against USDA’s organic certification policy for foreign crops, which is currently being reviewed by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In short, Kaser alleges that USDA’s system of “group certification” for foreign organic suppliers violates provisions of federal organic law, under which farms must be individually inspected for compliance with organic methods.

The USDA counters that its policy, under which foreign wholesalers are certified organic as long as 2% of their farm suppliers are inspected, is legally valid and necessary due to the large, complex networks of small farms involved.

In Kaser’s view, these “group certification” rules permit foreign growers to benefit from the organic label with minimal oversight, allowing them to undercut the prices charged by U.S. farmers, who must still abide by expensive and time-consuming record-keeping and inspection requirements.

“It’s created a system of certificate mills,” he said. “It’s become a game of certificates.”

The problem has repercussions beyond those faced by organic farmers and will likely harm the conventional hazelnut industry in Oregon, which is the dominant producer of the crop in the U.S., he said.

Since Turkish imports have kept the organic premium so low, they’re bound to eat into the market share of conventional hazelnuts as well, Kaser said. “When the price starts to get close, the organic seal starts to make the sale for you.”

Apart from hazelnuts, other crops imported from other regions of the world can also be marketed as organic through “group certification,” even if they weren’t actually grown according to organic protocols, he said.

“It’s so much bigger than hazelnuts,” Kaser said. “This problem is dominating organic trade in the United States of America.”

While Kaser is fighting for domestic producers on the legal front, he believes that consumer awareness of the different organic regulations for U.S. and Turkish hazelnuts can be part of the solution.

“We’re trying to put the public in a position that it knows what it’s getting and makes a choice,” he said.

To improve consumer recognition, the Oregon Organic Hazelnut Collective recently obtained a grant for about $200,000 from the USDA to promote the crop through paid advertising, social media and other online activities, which the group hopes to parlay into a longer-term effort with additional funding sources.

“It’s a build over time. You’ve got to stick with it and keep building,” said Judy Hirigoyen, a marketing expert hired to organize the effort.

Hazelnut growers are in a good position to “elevate” the crop among consumers due to their positive impressions of Oregon’s wine and cheese industries, she said. Social media “influencers” will have a role to play in these promotions, but the most effective “brand ambassadors” will be the farmers themselves.

“Some of them are painfully shy, so I have to get them to warm up to it,” Hirigoyen said. “If all these people start flooding social media, you have a campaign.”