About
MISSION:
To (re)build the chestnut industry in America.
Chestnuts used to be a staple in millions of Americans diet. Today, very few us have ever eaten a chestnut. We're going to fix that.
APPROACH:
To achieve our mission, we'll focus on three areas that have prevented chestnuts from regaining popularity:
1. Making known-genetic cultivars (nursery stock) available to farmers
2. Sharing best practices for commercial scale cultivation, harvesting, and processing
3. Increasing consumer awareness of the nuts through education, marketing, and full-year supply
Nursery Stock
We've partnered with West Coast Chestnut (WCC) to make known-genetic varieties available to chestnut farmers as soon as possible. WCC has been working on tissue culture propagating chestnut trees for several years and has recently began making them available for sale. Their advances in propagation allow growers to select the exact cultivars they'd like to grow based on their specific conditions and their desired nut characteristics.
Farming Practices
The first step to developing best practices is openly sharing actual farm activities, inputs, & results. Part of our partnership with WCC includes the development of their demonstration orchard. They're committed to sharing regular updates online via their blog (Link Here) that will include orchard design, farming & irrigation practices, tree growth metrics, yield results, and more.
We'd love to develop partnerships with additional growers. Please reach out via our Contact Page if you'd be interested in working together to help farmers like yourself better farm, or begin farming, chestnuts.
Consumer Awareness
Most Americans have never eaten a chestnut. Most can't find a chestnut in a local grocery store even if they wanted to buy one. No major American food companies are using chestnuts as a core part of their foods/snacks/drinks/deserts.
We'll work to increase awareness this through improved reliability of supply chains (particularly important to food companies), marketing campaigns direct to consumers, research on the health benefits of chestnuts, and more. This will take time, but it's worth the effort and will be supported by our improved nursery stock and farming practice focuses.
We need to make great tasting chestnuts available year-round so that an average American can fall in love with the nut at first taste and have options to purchase them whenever they'd like.