Why you’re paying more for pine nuts these days

I would not want to be in charge of procurement at the Costco in Johnson County. The store currently doesn’t have large bags of pine nuts in stock and after hearing a Costco employee receive a few choice words about that decision, it would seem that hell hath no fury scorned like a woman denied an oversized sack of the key pesto ingredient.

But it is not just in Johnson County that a pine nuts craze is raging. Fickle temperatures and a poor crop in China have led to a dramatic increase in price. The Chicago Tribune looked at the situation domestically and what’s going on in China, the main supplier of pine nuts to America.