I'm a consulting forester in southern Wisconsin. I'm trying to project future walnut prices in order to estimate rates of return for investments in walnut culture, and regarding cut/leave decisions in timber harvests. The basic assumption would be that the long-term future price increases would be similar to price increases over the past few decades. This rate would be combined with growth projections to arrive at a future value estimate.

Wisconsin DNR has some information (MFL program), but the gathering of data has some major problems and isn't very reliable. I had seen something from the Walnut Council many years ago which suggested an average annual increase of 2.6% over inflation, but I don't have a reference to this info any more and the Walnut Council web site didn't have any such information.

Do you have any tracking of walnut prices over the past 25-50 years, or suggestions of where such could be found?

Greetings Mark:

Dr. Bill Hoover at Purdue University would be the individual whom you to need to speak with regarding past, present, and future log prices and trends. Dr. Hoover has assembled numerous extension forestry bulletins over the years related to your finance and economic questions.

Here is the link to Purdue's Extension Forestry Publications: http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr.htm

Resources for tracking historic black walnut prices:

USDA Timber Prices on the Web: http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/econ/data/prices/index.htm

I Hope this helps you answer your questions!