The ability to see an opportunity in an everyday environment marks an entrepreneur.
Ralph Hammons took a chance on marketing black walnuts found throughout Southwest Missouri. It grew into a family business that is the world’s largest buyer and processor of eastern black walnuts.
Burney Ralph Hammons was born July 8, 1913. He grew up in Southwest Missouri and married Faye Summers in 1931. The couple lived in Springfield and Fair Play before moving to Stockton in 1937.
They operated a small retail grocery and produce store in Stockton.
In 1945, he thought he saw an opportunity as a sidelight to his grocery in black walnuts found throughout the area. He took a chance and bought 3 million pounds of the nuts and shipped them to a plant in Virginia. That proved to be profitable. But the next year, he wondered if a processing plant could be located in Stockton to save the shipping costs. He purchased a nut-cracking machine from Tennessee.
Hammons Products Co.
During the initial years, the operation was contained in a 36-by-72-foot building with a capacity for holding about 100,000 pounds of nuts. The processed nuts were marketed as the Missouri Dandy brand. Improvements to cracking machines allowed the company to increase its production.
Hammons led the development of better methods of hulling the walnuts, which made production of the kernels economically viable. He came up with the intricate machinery by working in his own machine shop. Instead of discarding the shells, he found ways to crush the shells for a variety of uses.
Walnuts grew wild across the Ozarks. He contracted local feed and produce stores in the area to serve as buying stations. Ads were placed in local newspapers advertising the location of those stations, to which individuals and families would bring their walnuts. Prices in the 1950s could average $3.50 per hundredweight of hulled nuts.
Children earned school or Christmas money picking up walnuts while other families took a more focused approach. They would check with neighbors, scout out roadsides and wood lots for walnut trees. Then they would haul in truckloads of nuts for sale.
By 1959, Hammons had leased 70 hulling machines to buyers in Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma. Cities as far as away Sedalia, Marshall, Columbia, Boonville, St. Joseph and Kirksville had Hammons buyers.
Hammons continued to direct the company until his death at age 59 in 1973. Operation of the company passed to son, Dwain, who continued the expansion of the business.
Search for better trees
The eastern black walnut is a tree native from central Texas to southern Minnesota to the East Coast. It had a tendency to produce nuts in alternate years. The trees tend not to self-pollinate, which means the character of the nuts can vary widely. This is important because for every 100 pounds of walnuts, about 8 pounds of salable nutmeats are obtained.
Hammons set up Sho-Neff Plantation on a 790-acre farm. There, research into the most productive varieties for wood and nut production began.
Cloning studies were conducted by grafting wood from a desired tree, which was then encouraged to grow rootstock in individual containers with water mists on an automated schedule.
Research into better varieties led to two patents for the seedlings Hammons Select 1 and Hammons Select 2 in 1996. The patents were the culmination of 10 years of study. This was the first time a private company had secured such a patent.
Select 1 was suited to upland locations, Select 2 performed better in bottomland. According to their research, an acre with 54 of the patented trees could produce up to 3,000 pounds of walnuts a year.
The requirement for consistent harvests was seen when rainy summers, frosts or droughts often drastically affected walnut harvests. Bumper crop years produced as much as the record 48.6 million pounds of nuts in 1999, while the drought year of 1981 returned just 27 million pounds. These numbers were from the 18 states the company buyers drew upon. Moreover, as demand for walnut lumber increased along with the clearing of wood lots for urban development, the company looked to the creation of walnut orchards as an alternative, reliable source.
Diverse walnut products
Beginning with sales of walnuts as packaged nuts, the company’s offerings grew into a variety of snacks, candies, baked goods, oils and flavorings. The company has expanded to include retail and online sales of its walnut products, such as the Missouri Dandy Pantry brand.
Products made from the shells have grown into another whole division of the company. Uses for crushed shells include abrasive cleaning agents, water filtration, an ingredient in oil industry sealants for fracture zones, filler for dynamite, uses in plywood and particle board, and as an ingredient in resins for the creation of cold castings. And, last but not least, as an ingredient in cosmetics such as soap and cosmetic cleaners.
Dwain Hammons led the company from 1973 until he stepped down in 1997.. His son, Brian Hammons, is the CEO at the present.
The company still depends upon individual harvesters for its supply of walnuts. To spur on harvesters in 2016, prices for hulled walnuts were increased to $15 per 100 pounds of hulled nuts. They have 215 hulling stations in 11 states.
“We want to be sure that people are motivated to get out and harvest the cash from the trees that’s going to be falling on the ground,” Hammons said.
As Brian Hammons’ son David said in a 2010 Globe interview, “We are no longer just selling an ingredient. We are selling a whole product.”