Nuts are sometimes healthy snacks that can provide protein and energy while curbing cravings.
A popular nut for snack-eaters is the macadamia nut.
With its pleasant flavor and satisfying crunch, the macadamia has become a favorite of many people.
Despite its popularity, you’ll often find that macadamia nuts can become quite expensive.
Considering that it’s just a nut, you may wonder what factors drive up the price.
Why Are Macadamia Nuts So Expensive? (10 Reasons)
Macadamia nuts vary in price if you’re looking at the best macadamia nut versus lower quality ones.
The best macadamia nuts tend to cost $25 per pound.
Certain factors like nutrition, difficult harvesting methods, and expensive production costs all make the price of macadamia nuts expensive.
Let’s look at these factors in more detail.
1. Vegan Substitute For Butter And Dairy
One of the reasons macadamia nuts are expensive is that there’s a lot of demand for them.
They have a unique creamy texture and flavor that makes them popular with people with different diets.
For example, those who have a vegan diet often choose to use macadamia nuts instead of butter or dairy.
They’ll mash the nuts together to form a thick, creamy paste and sometimes add a few more ingredients.
Then they spread the paste across bread or add it to other meals to substitute for butter or dairy.
With more people trying out plant-based diets, more people are looking to replace certain ingredients, like butter and dairy, with healthier alternatives.
That means there’s a higher demand for macadamia nuts.
Besides being a great replacement for butter and dairy, macadamia nuts also serve as a great snack for vegans and vegetarians.
They’re pleasant-tasting, easy to put into a sack, and can get added to other snacks like yogurt or even hummus.
Because they work as both a snack, in themselves, and as an ingredient that replaces another ingredient, there is a higher demand for macadamia nuts.
Since there’s higher demand, the price for macadamia nuts becomes more expensive.
Macadamia nuts are expensive because of the higher demand for them coming from those following a plant-based diet.
2. Nutritious Fats
Another reason macadamia nuts are expensive is due to their nutrition.
At first, there wasn’t a lot of love for macadamia nuts because they have a lot of fat in them.
However, when everyone realized that the fats inside the macadamia nut were actually healthy, there was a lot more interest in them.
In particular, they’re low on sugar which makes them an ideal snack for anyone with diabetes or looking to prevent diabetes.
They also have a decent amount of protein in them.
A one-ounce serving of macadamia nuts, for example, has 2.24 grams of protein.
Another important health aspect of macadamia nuts is that they have a good amount of monosaturated fats in them.
Monosaturated fats are far healthier than saturated fats or trans fats.
That’s because they actually help lower the bad cholesterol in your blood.
Cholesterol can lead to cardiac arrest and heart disease, so it’s always important to watch your levels.
If you’re someone who suffers from high cholesterol, adding macadamia nuts to your diet as a snack can be a great way to help reduce it.
However, that also adds to the demand for macadamia nuts.
Since they’re a healthy snack, they appeal to people who are trying to lose weight, gain muscle, or just become healthier in general.
Unfortunately, that also means the price of macadamia nuts is going to be higher.
For one, there’s more demand for them since people want to eat them to stay healthy.
Secondly, healthy food always tends to be a bit more expensive.
These two factors contribute to making macadamia nuts expensive.
3. Lengthy Growth Cycle
A problem that makes macadamia nuts expensive is the fact that they have a lengthy growth cycle.
It takes a long time before macadamia nut farmers turn any sort of profit.
The first time a tree can potentially start growing nuts is when it’s four years old.
A farmer has to wait four years before they can start producing macadamia nuts and earning a profit.
The nuts that get produced at such a young age are usually quite small, too.
They’re not the large nuts that most people want to buy.
As such, farmers may not even make that much profit off their first harvest.
It’s really not until the trees reach the age of 14 or 15 that they start producing macadamia nuts of great quality.
At this point, they’re producing a lot and a farmer can finally start to earn a good profit from them.
Unfortunately, this means that macadamia nut farmers have a long time to wait before they can pay back their start-up costs.
Farmers aren’t just waiting around for their trees to grow either.
They have to protect the trees, nourish them, and ensure that they get enough water and sunlight.
Macadamia trees aren’t always the easiest things to grow.
They’re especially vulnerable at their younger ages.
It’s only once they grow large enough that their canopies connect and cover each other that they’re safer.
That doesn’t happen for a few years.
In the meantime, farmers have to spend money to protect the trees and ensure they grow well.
They end up putting in a lot of costs before they start to take in any form of profit.
Since they have a lot of overhead to make up for, the farmers have to sell their macadamia nuts at expensive prices.
Macadamia nuts are expensive because they take a long time to initially grow.
4. Requires A Specific Climate
Another reason macadamia nuts are expensive is that they require a specific climate to grow.
High-quality macadamia nuts initially came from Australia.
While there are a few other varieties of macadamia nuts, only two species produce the nuts that people know and love.
Those two species need a specific type of climate in which to grow.
One of the factors it needs is a high altitude.
Macadamia trees don’t grow well in areas with low altitudes.
For whatever reason, the trees grow better in areas of high altitude.
Another important factor for the trees to have is a lot of rain.
It needs a tropical sort of climate in which it rains often.
Finally, it requires warm temperatures.
Australia was able to provide that sort of climate for the macadamia tree, and that’s why a good portion of the macadamia nuts on the market come from “the land down under.”
There are a few other regions in the world that also grow macadamia trees.
Hawaii, for example, is one of the main locations in the United States that has the right climate for them.
California is another.
Certain areas in China also have the right conditions.
However, because the macadamia tree requires such a specific type of climate, there is a limit to areas that can grow it.
This ends up creating scarcity because not every farmer in the world is going to be able to plant a grove.
With such scarce planting areas, the price of macadamia nuts becomes higher.
Macadamia nuts are expensive because they require a specific climate in which to grow which limits their production.
5. Lots Of Demand For Plantable Land
Besides requiring a specific climate in which to grow, macadamia nuts aren’t the only crop that needs that sort of climate.
It just so happens that those areas are also in high demand for other types of crops.
This makes macadamia nuts more expensive because it means farmers have fewer areas in which to grow the trees.
Since they’re not able to have sprawling fields of macadamia groves, it limits how much they’re able to produce.
The rest of the land is already taken up by other desirable crops or they face high land prices.
The sort of climate in which macadamia nuts grow well is in high demand.
Whenever there’s high demand for land and a low supply of it, the price of that land increases.
This makes macadamia nuts expensive because farmers have to spend more to get that land.
They might have an expensive loan that they need to pay back or even high rental fees on the land.
Since macadamia trees take a long time to grow and produce nuts, farmers end up going deeper and deeper into debt with land costs alone.
Macadamia nuts are expensive because the land they need to grow on is expensive and often already used by other crops.
6. Expensive Start-Up Costs
Macadamia nuts are also expensive because manufacturers face expensive start-up costs.
Farmers aren’t the only ones who need to pay expensive prices to get started farming macadamia nuts.
Manufacturers who take those nuts and turn them into the delicious snacks everyone wants also have high costs.
In particular, they need to invest in high-quality equipment that’s capable of carefully de-shelling each nut.
Most people don’t want to de-shell nuts themselves.
They prefer to buy nuts that are already out of the shell, so they can just pop them right into their mouths.
That sort of process is intricate.
The shells of most nuts are difficult to remove.
Machines have to be careful about de-shelling each nut to ensure the manufacturer can get as high of a yield as possible.
Since they’re using specialized equipment, it’s more expensive.
This makes macadamia nuts expensive because the manufacturer has to offset their production costs.
With expensive production costs, they need to sell expensive products.
Macadamia nuts are expensive because initial production costs are expensive.
7. Hard To Get Whole Macadamia Nuts
Macadamia nuts are usually priced by the pound.
However, that pricing doesn’t include the shell.
It’s priced by the weight of the nut, itself.
Another factor that determines its price is whether the nut is whole or missing pieces.
Like any other nut, macadamia nuts are vulnerable and delicate.
They’re easy to break during the de-shelling process.
Most people want a whole nut.
Gourmet chefs want whole nuts because they make a plate look better.
People who eat them as snacks want whole nuts because it means they’re getting more nutrition from them.
When a nut isn’t whole, it means it doesn’t have as much of its healthy oil in it.
The problem with de-shelling macadamia nuts is that it’s very hard.
Manufacturers who de-shell macadamia nuts are lucky if they get 35% of whole macadamia nuts compared to broken pieces.
That means many companies have to grow and process tons of macadamia nuts before they reach their quota for whole nuts.
While those companies can still sell broken macadamia nuts, they’re not going to sell as well as whole nuts.
They won’t earn as much of a profit as a result.
Whole macadamia nuts sell better, but it tends to take more time and costs more money to produce whole nuts.
To make it worth the investment and time, manufacturers end up selling whole macadamia nuts for expensive prices.
Macadamia nuts are expensive because getting a whole macadamia nut out of its shell is rare.
8. New Nut-In-Shell Market
Because of how difficult it is to get the nut out of the shell, a whole new industry has got its start.
This industry is particularly popular in China and Japan.
The nut-in-shell market sells macadamia nuts while they’re still in the shell.
Some manufacturers have decided to drop prices slightly to let their customers attempt to take the nut out of the shell, themselves.
While this means that those specific macadamia nuts may be less expensive, it also means that whole macadamia nuts are more expensive.
That’s because it means there’s more demand for macadamia nuts.
With a new market opening up that’s selling the same product, it means farmers are producing even smaller supplies compared to rising demand.
Demand has risen thanks to the in-shell market.
Farmers now have to supply both that market and whole-nut macadamia producers.
With low supply and high demand, the price of whole macadamias is more expensive.
9. Handpicked And Inspected
Another reason macadamia nuts are expensive is that harvesting them is usually done by hand.
It all has to do with how delicate macadamia shells are.
There isn’t a machine available just yet that can carefully pick up the nuts from the ground and deposit them.
Instead, farmers use human harvesters to pick up the nuts on the ground.
Human workers are also used because they have to inspect each nut.
It’s extremely difficult to know when a nut is ready for harvest.
While many farmers will start collecting them as soon as they hit the ground, it doesn’t always mean the nut is ready.
Some require more time to fully produce the oil that macadamia nuts have a reputation for.
As such, they rely on workers to look at the nuts and determine, to their best ability, whether the nut is ready.
This means the process of harvesting macadamia nuts is long and laborious.
As such, labor costs end up becoming quite expensive.
To offset that cost, farmers sell their macadamia nuts at high prices.
10. Used In Gourmet Dishes
A final reason macadamia nuts are expensive is that a lot of gourmet chefs have started using them in their dishes.
These nuts can make a dish look even more intricate and beautiful.
Since they also add a health factor to the meal, gourmet chefs can say their dishes are even healthier.
This makes macadamia nuts expensive for a few reasons.
The first is that gourmet food is often considered a luxury.
It’s fancy and comes at expensive prices.
Since macadamia nuts are now linked with gourmet dishes, they also get linked with those expensive, luxury prices.
Finally, it also means that there’s even more demand for macadamia nuts.
With more demand and low supply, the price of macadamia nuts only increases.
Conclusion
Macadamia nuts are a healthy snack that can you can eat on their own or use as a substitute for something else in cooking.
Due to high demand and difficult, expensive growing and production costs, macadamia nuts are expensive to buy.
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