We spend years getting the trees into the ground, tending the soil, and waiting for the burs to open. But getting the nuts off the trees is just the starting line for revenue. We calculate yield per acre, project the harvest out a decade, and expect the math to guarantee a return. But the actual revenue in perennial agriculture is determined entirely by what happens between the farm gate and the consumer table.
We recently sat down with Sandy Russell on the Branching Out: Growing Together podcast to discuss this shift. She spent years managing global enterprise platforms before building her chestnut operation with her husband Brad. Her assessment of agricultural supply chains is precise. The biggest financial leak for independent growers is information asymmetry.
Why Your Losing Money After the Harvest
Many of us pour our energy into the physical act of farming. Sandy explained that the farm work is just the beginning of the value chain.
“Honestly, the breaking point, really, it’s not the crop itself,” Sandy noted. “It’s really around the operations behind the crop.” She added that our focus must eventually shift away from the dirt. “Another big portion outside the farm work is really around the cold chain. It’s around grading standards, packaging, forecasting, traceability.”
During a previous episode, Tom Wahl of Red Fern Farm once referred to these processes as the true “profit suckers” of the industry. However, these steps only drain profit if we fail to professionalize them. When you build predictability, you unlock premium markets.
Retail buyers need to know exactly what we have and when it will arrive. U.S. specialty crops generate over $75 billion in annual farm-gate sales, yet poor temperature management and a lack of cold-chain infrastructure drive a 12 to 30 percent loss along the value chain. By controlling those variables, you immediately capture revenue that others are losing.
Sandy shared exactly how buyers think: “In big retail supply chains, data isn’t optional. It’s how you manage risk. If you can’t measure it, you cannot scale it.”
Why Commercial Buyers Pay Premium Prices for My Crop
We are entering a period of bumpy growth where large-scale producers will take up more space in the market. As we have seen in other domestic agricultural sectors, it does not take many massive operations to quickly overwhelm a market.
The U.S. dairy industry offers a stark mathematical reality of this squeeze: farms with over 1,000 cows achieved production costs of $13.59 per hundredweight, while smaller farms with 100 to 199 cows faced costs of $20.82. That 35 percent cost advantage allows massive operations to push wholesale and retail prices down to levels that smaller farms simply cannot match.
Large chestnut operations will have the capital to build highly efficient, labor-saving processing systems. They can control quality and quantity rapidly, positioning themselves as the go-to marketplace. If small growers face a bad year and low prices, they risk going out of business entirely. Survival requires us to adapt and professionalize immediately.
Sandy pointed out that buyers do not just want quality; they want consistency and the ability to deliver every single time without drama. When a smaller farm adopts strict process discipline—setting exact times for how long a nut stays on the ground and establishing rapid cooling protocols—they transform from a passionate grower into a high-value supplier. This operational readiness protects margins and secures a permanent place in the market.
Stop Middlemen From Taking Your Margins
As smaller farms grow, we naturally want to combine our harvests to fulfill larger orders. This introduces the severe risk of blind aggregation. Mixing crops spreads hidden risks across the entire system.
Remedying yearly deficits by buying from neighboring farms only works if everyone produces nuts of identical quality. Without shared standards for moisture levels and grading, one poorly cooled batch ruins the whole bin. We must establish uniform handling practices before we attempt to mix our crops.
Let’s Build A Better Post-Harvest Systems Together
No single farm knows enough to perfect this process alone. While it is tempting to view post-harvest techniques as trade secrets, keeping this information isolated hurts all of us. Secrets are actually worth more when they are shared to elevate the entire supply chain.
When we openly discuss what works, and just as importantly, where we have made mistakes, we improve the baseline quality of domestic chestnuts. Every new acre we plant needs a clear plan for post-harvest handling, and we can build those plans faster together.
We are building something incredibly special. Developing strong operational systems takes time, but we are here to support each other every step of the way. I want to hear your thoughts on building better systems for your farm.
Listen to the full episode with Sandy Russell on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Let’s keep growing with confidence and purpose.