MR. ROHRBACHER: On what basis do you buy black walnuts?
MR. MANGELSDORF: I understand that each individual sale is an individual "horse-trading" deal, the price paid, depending upon the quality of nuts, moisture content, color and other factors. Of course, our aim is to buy the nuts as cheaply as possible and the object of the fellow selling the nuts is to get the greatest return that he can from what he has to offer. So we try to reach a happy medium in our dealings, and a lot of concessions might be made one way or the other with special lots that are offered for sale.
MR. WHITFORD: What sizes and grades of kernels do you have?
MR. MANGELSDORF: We have the large, medium, small and granules. Granules are very small pieces. Usually the prices paid for the nuts are not determined, actually, until the crop starts to move. Everybody has an idea what the market price will be for the nuts, but nothing is crystallized or brought to a focus until the first nuts are actually on the market. Then the nuts sold are examined as to quality, giving some idea of the future quality of deliveries that might be made in that section, and then prices can be established. As I say, it's a nutty business. I haven't grown very many gray hairs yet, but I expect to have many before I am through. And each new problem that arises in this nut business, when you reach a solution for it, invariably there are two other problems that are created, and if you are not wide awake, one of these problems can be much greater than the one that you just had a solution for.
MR. DAVIDSON: Do you know anything as to the bearing of black walnuts this year as compared to previous years?
MR. MANGELSDORF: Mr. Walker and Mr. McDonald are out at the present time making a crop inspection tour of the various localities, and I have had no report as to what the condition of the crop will be this year.
MR. WHITFORD: Which grades bring the highest prices?
MR. MANGELSDORF: The large particles of kernel demand a premium over the smaller sizes. That is one of the discrepancies in the shelling operation, that the material that costs us the least money to produce gives the largest returns. When you have small pieces, the operation of removing the last remaining shells and off-colored particles is much greater than with the large kernels. One large kernel amounts to considerable weight and you may have to pick up many small particles to represent the same weight.
PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: We appreciate very much your talk, Mr.
Mangelsdorf.
One thing that interested me was your statement that having large pieces was an advantage. That question has been argued on the floor of these conventions a number of times and there have been those who claimed that the larger pieces were all ground up anyway and that the varieties from which you can recover large pieces were of no particular merit commercially.