Changes in Prices of Nuts.

 Most people I know absolutely love eating nuts.  All sorts of nuts like almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios, walnuts, and pecans.  They eat them straight, add them to desserts, quick breads, butters, and make non-dairy milks.  Often, I complain about the costs with my friends because they seem so expensive but how much do growers get?

This opens the doors to a real life project using information on how much growers receive versus how much nuts are sold for.  For instance, the average price for a pound of nuts increased from $4.63 per pound in 2011 to $6.07 per pound in 2016.  This information comes from this graph.

If one wants to look at the prices for individual nuts, that can be done.  This site allows one to see how the prices of in shell almonds changed  in California from 2014 to 2020.  It provides prices at least once a month or sometimes twice and includes the percent increase or decrease.  The site also includes a graph showing the same information so students can see it visually too.

On the other hand, one can look at the change in prices for walnuts in Spain between 2013 to 2018 here.  Furthermore this graph published the prices for both shelled and unshelled walnuts per kilo.  This site focuses on walnut production in California.  It has great graphics on the price per pound farmers receive for the years 2000 to 2017.  In addition, it has graphs on California walnut production, walnut yield, acreage used to grow walnuts, farm value of the nuts, value of exports per unit, and projected values for 2018.  Great information to use on a compare and contrast presentations.

Ycharts has graphs for pecans, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts.  Each graph covers average yearly prices beginning in 1996 to the present.  Not all charts use the same unit of measure.  The information on hazelnut production is based on metric ton while pistachios are per pound.  Not all the data listed on each page appears in graph form so it is easy to have students graph the complete data while calculating the yearly increase or decrease.

The last site gives students a change to perform more calculations in the spreadsheet, have additional data to analyze for trends and patterns while offering an opportunity to see what happened in the real world to create the changes in price.  If students can discover what happened to create the cost to rise or fall, they are on the way to understanding the economics of supply and demand.

In addition, since the unit measurements are different, it means students have to practice converting crops into the same unit to be able to compare and contrast the cost, increases or decreases in percentages.

This is something that uses real life data to see changes over time.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.