A Member: Dr. MacDaniels, if a man has a $20,000 machine for cracking walnuts and he has a choice between the Thomas walnut and a good wild one, he will pay a little bit more for Thomas walnuts, will he not?
Dr. MacDaniels: The question raised is that if a cracking plant which cracks thousands of pounds can get more kernels out of a hundred pounds of Thomas nuts or any other grafted variety, would the operators pay something more for them? I think undoubtedly they would, but would they pay enough of a differential over the wild nuts to make it worthwhile to the grower? I don't know.
Dr. Crane: If you take pecans which are our best example, 95 per cent of all nuts produced in the United States are marketed as shelled kernels, and there is a very substantial price differential between seedlings and budded pecans, and the crackers will pay the difference based on the yield of kernels. That is their only interest. The thickness of shell, how well it cracks, or any other factor is of no importance. If the kernels are there, they will get them out.
Dr. MacDaniels: That is the crux of this whole matter. Are we interested in developing varieties for cracking in which we care little about the size of the pieces recovered or about the ease of extraction, or do we want nuts for home use that will give a high yield of large pieces? These machines, as I understand it, will crack the walnuts and get the kernels out in small pieces regardless of how they crack in a Hershey cracker.
Mr. Weber: As I understood Mr. Mullins, he favored having a lot of
Thomas if he could get them.
Dr. MacDaniels: Would he pay the difference? I don't know. Dr. Crane says he would.
President Davidson: When I talked to him—we passed through there and saw the plant—he said he thinks well enough of the better nuts to come here for the purpose of learning where and how to manage a plantation of his own of Thomas and the other budded varieties for his own cracking plant. In his own cracking plant the yield for the amount of labor expended is so much better on the improved varieties that he wants to make a planting of his own. He will pay more, but just how much more, I don't know.
That brings up another matter. As I have said before, our state authorities should be urged again and again and again to buy good seed nuts for distribution to the public so that we can get these better quality nuts into the woods. Some of them are agreeing to that. Some of them are doing it. But so far not very much has been done.
Dr. MacDaniels: I think that before your committee goes ahead we must get a decision on this point, for the approaches are quite different. If you are developing a schedule for home use, the size of the nuts is of importance. In general, the bigger the nut the easier it is to handle, the easier it is to shuck and crack. The percentage of kernel is relatively less important than it is in the commercial cracking. The size of the particles recovered is more important for home use. If they come out easily and in large pieces, they are much more desirable.
On the other hand, in commercial cracking the percentage of kernel is important. The commercial buyer wants to know how many pounds of kernels can be expected from a hundred pounds of nuts. He is not much interested in the size of the nuts or the size of pieces that are recovered. This is an entirely different approach to the problem. We have got to decide between the two before the committee goes further.