About – Walnut Bargaining Association

The Walnut Bargaining Association (WBA) is the only organization that exists solely to represents California walnut farmers. WBA’s only goal is to help you get a fair price for your walnuts.

Incorporated as a grower-owned agricultural cooperative in 1991, the WBA has been working with California walnut farmers in the areas of field price establishment, grade and quality issues, terms of sale and market intelligence.

Membership in the WBA is voluntary. Growers who join pay an assessment to cover expenses of the WBA. The assessment rate is set by the WBA’s Board of Directors who are elected by the membership. It is currently, $2/ton or .001 cents/pound.

The WBA was organized principally to protect the economic interests of walnut growers in an industry that has traditionally been dominated by walnut processors/handlers, providing limited opportunity for grower concerns to be addressed.

The WBA works cooperatively with other walnut industry organizations including the Walnut Marketing Board and the California Walnut Commission. However, the WBA is a unique entity that exists above all else to represent the interests of walnut farmers.

WBA Activities

Over the years, WBA has worked to bring the “grower’s voice” to the economic and marketing decisions that impact returns for walnuts. Some examples of practices that have resulted from work of the WBA include:

Incentive payments from handlers for high quality walnut deliveries by growers.
Third-party inspections to confirm the grade and quality of incoming deliveries from walnut growers.
Crucial walnut industry data needed for government assistance programs and to fight trade barriers and tariffs.
Maintain critical pesticides and crop protection tools necessary to farm walnuts.
Sample walnut sales contracts to ensure you’re getting a fair deal with your handler.

As an example of efforts to assist growers, the WBA worked with other industry associations to ensure walnut growers were eligible to receive an additional payment of 26 cents per pound to cover sales losses as part of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

Most importantly, the WBA activities center on efforts to gather accurate information about grower returns and share these with members of the WBA. This information provided by WBA represents the most accurate and detailed data on prices available to walnut growers.

Additionally, the WBA prepares an annual “Economic and Market Analysis” report to provide economic and statistical data, projections and historical facts concerning the California walnut industry. This report helps set the stage for determining field price “offers” and field price “guidelines” for widespread grower and processor reference. The information is extremely useful in helping walnut farmers make critical business decisions.

The WBA also publishes a newsletter that is mailed to California walnut growers to report on current marketing and economic issues facing the industry. Information on sales, trade market pricing, field pricing, quality issues, processor yields, domestic and export shipments and trends are included in the newsletter. The WBA has received tremendous grower support for the newsletter as one of the only sources of significant economic and marketing information available to growers.