How the Hazelnut Harvest Shapes the Black Sea Table

A Few Weeks in August

When August arrives on the Black Sea coast's steep slopes, work shifts almost entirely to the hazelnut orchards. Field research shows the harvest begins in August and, depending on how the weather behaves, can run into mid-September.

That narrow window sits at the end of a longer regional labor circuit. Seasonal farmworkers in the eastern Black Sea region start with cotton hoeing in March, move through fruit and vegetable picking in May and June, pick apricots in July, work hazelnuts in August and September, then head to citrus groves in winter.

Because the harvest window is so short, growers have to assemble enough labor within the same few weeks — turning the harvest into a brief but intense episode of collective organization rather than an ordinary farm task.

Labor Brokers: The Harvest's Informal Network

Finding enough hands within hazelnut's short picking window usually happens not through a formal hiring channel but through a labor broker locally called "dayıbaşı." Field research from Giresun describes this figure as someone who finds workers for a grower, negotiates working conditions and daily pay with the grower, handles workers' problems, and sometimes lends them money.

Most workers strike only a verbal agreement with the grower; written contracts are almost never used. That makes harvest labor an informal, trust-based arrangement — workers treat the broker as much as a safety net as a way of finding a job.

Shared Lodging, Shared Table

The harvest's short, demanding nature pushes most small and mid-sized producers to bring in seasonal workers alongside their own household labor. Field research from Giresun records nine-to-eleven-hour workdays with three breaks, and found that roughly 87 percent of workers lodge on the plot the grower assigns them.

Crews staying in the same orchard for weeks also share food and lodging supplies — the same study found 87 percent of workers pool their provisions. Meals are typically cooked outdoors, in front of the lodging area, on large flat griddles turning out bread and flatbread — partly because lodging sites rarely have anything resembling a proper kitchen.

Setting that shared table falls to women workers. The same research found women prepare breakfast and dinner, cook the next day's lunch, and lay the meal out in the orchard — the harvest's day-to-day continuity rests heavily on that labor.

Separate research from Ordu and Giresun found harvest workers are roughly 60 percent male and 40 percent female, with the large majority (83.3 percent) married — a pattern consistent with harvest labor organized around households rather than individuals.

Finding Room to Dry

Hazelnuts don't go straight to processing after picking; they need to dry first. In Turkey, hazelnuts are typically hand-harvested in their shells and sun-dried.

That drying step needs flat, sun-exposed ground — not something every household on the Black Sea's narrow, mountainous coast can set aside easily during harvest season.

A Registered Identity: Giresun Tombul Hazelnut

Turkey's Patent and Trademark Office geographical indication registry reflects hazelnut's place in the region. "Giresun Tombul Fındığı" is registered as a designation of origin, filed on 18 September 2000 and registered on 10 October 2001 under registration number 31.

Designation of origin is a protection category that ties a product tightly to a specific geography — turning the Giresun tombul variety into a defined, bounded product rather than just a name for a nut type.

Hazelnut in Pastry and Sweets

In Black Sea cooking, hazelnut is more than a snack. Crushed or ground, it works as a filling or coating in pastries and desserts, where its high fat content gives both flavor and texture.

That same fat content makes hazelnut oil possible — internationally, hazelnut oil is used as a cooking oil or in salad dressings, a general property of the nut rather than something specific to the Black Sea.

Steep Ground, Shared with Corn

Hazelnut grows across a wide elevation range, from low ground up to a known maximum of about 1,600 meters — one reason the orchards can spread so widely across the Black Sea's mountainous, flat-land-poor terrain.

Corn has historically dominated the same region: it's Anatolia's most widely planted grain in the eastern Black Sea, locally called "Laz otu" or "lazut" for the Laz sailors who are said to have spread it there. Corn's staying power in the same territory hazelnut orchards now cover suggests the two crops split the region's limited land across different elevations and slopes.

A Harvest That Sets the Year's Economic Rhythm

Production numbers show how much weight the harvest carries. In 2023, world in-shell hazelnut production reached 1.13 million tonnes, with Turkey alone accounting for 57.7 percent of it.

Much of that comes directly from the Black Sea: one academic source, citing Turkish state statistics, put 2021 production at 684,000 tonnes nationally, of which 303,909 tonnes came from the eastern Black Sea region.

A harvest of that size shapes producing households' economic calendar for the rest of the year. But the picture looks different for the seasonal workers who make it possible — research from Ordu and Giresun found most harvest workers earn below subsistence-level income.

The same research traced how long participants had been doing this work: the longest-serving participant has picked hazelnuts seasonally for 25 years, and the most common tenure band is 11 to 15 years — a sign that the harvest is an annual fixture not just for producing households, but for the same generations of workers who return to it.