Chestnut Growers of America (CGA) connects growers, researchers, and industry partners to advance the national chestnut market in the United States. We aim to equip growers with the precise market data and structural support required to build a sustainable, profitable agricultural enterprise.
Who This Is For
We serve agricultural professionals investing capital, time, and land into commercial chestnut production.
Whether you are establishing your first block of trees or managing hundreds of bearing acres, you require reliable agronomic guidance to make informed operational decisions.
What You Will Find Here
From initial planting and orchard establishment to postharvest processing and market pricing, CGA is working to aggregate production practices from active chestnut orchards across the United States. You will find benchmarking reports, practical growing guidance, and ongoing updates from the CGA Blog to help you execute critical decisions: what genetic materials to plant, how to manage production, when to scale operations, and ideas on selling your harvest.
How To Use This Hub
Access the specific agronomic information that matches your current production phase
Chestnuts are one of the most compelling commercial tree crop opportunities available to U.S. farmers today — but entering production is a multigenerational commitment that requires clear-eyed evaluation upfront. Bearing-age chestnut acreage nearly doubled between 2017 and 2022, yet the country remains a net importer. The market gap is real. Membership in CGA is a starting point — connecting you to university research, grower experience, and educational resources like the United Chestnuts Academy as you build the foundation for your decision.
The decisions made at planting shape an orchard's productivity for decades. Tree selection, site drainage, soil pH, frost pocket avoidance, and early pruning systems all compound over time in ways that are difficult to correct later. CGA represents a number of professional, high-quality chestnut growers across cultivar and seedling operations, and membership connects you to their collective experience alongside the best available university research. The relationships built within the CGA community are often where the most practical establishment knowledge gets shared.
When trees reach bearing age, the work shifts from establishment to optimization. Pest pressure, canopy management, annual fertility, harvest timing, and post-harvest handling all directly affect what ends up marketable. Membership in CGA connects growers to peers doing this work at scale, and the resources available here will grow over time as CGA aggregates production knowledge from active orchards across the country.
Growing chestnuts profitably requires more than a good orchard — it requires a market. Pricing, channel selection, post-harvest processing, and cold chain logistics all determine your actual return. Cooperatives like Chestnut Growers Inc. in Michigan and Route 9 Cooperative in Ohio have demonstrated what organized market infrastructure looks like in practice. Membership in CGA is where growers can learn from operations like these and begin building the market relationships that matter. Developing national market intelligence is part of where this work is headed.