Pecan lovers face as dry a winter as the farmers faced this
summer. The Georgia
pecan crop is estimated at only 60 million pounds, down
about 45 percent from last year.
“We’re looking at a much smaller crop than we thought,”
said Tom Crocker, an Extension
Service horticulturist with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences.
“The nuts just didn’t mature out like we thought they
would.”
The holiday season brings both good and bad news for
pecan growers. Because of the
small crop, prices are up — way up. But most farmers can’t
supply enough pecans to meet
the holiday demand.
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| GOLDEN PECANS are worth nearly that much this year. Weather conditions just the opposite of perfect for pecans dropped this year’s crop yields by nearly 45 percent. One pecan wholesaler said consumers should expext to pay double last year’s prices for pecan gifts. |
Candy makers and specialty shops are willing to pay top
dollar for the scarce pecans to
meet their holiday gift orders, said Ron Cannon, a buyer at
Young Pecan Company in Albany,
Ga.
“So if you have plans to give pecans as gifts this
winter, be ready to pay nearly
twice what you did last year,” he said.
The good news is that 150 million pounds of the 1997 crop
are still available.
“The carry-over from last year will help supply this year’s
demand,” Cannon
said.
Cannon said he’s seen fewer and lower-quality nuts come
into their warehouse. “The
most noticeable effect is the drop in meat quantity,” Cannon
said.
In most years, pecan meat would be about half of the
total weight of the nut. Cannon
said the pecans this year are off about five or 10
percentage points. So in a ton of
in-shell pecans, only 800 to 900 pounds is pecan meat.
Cannon said they’re seeing many pecans with blight or
other disease, further dropping
the quality.
Crocker said the weather seemed to be just the opposite
of what pecans needed. It was
too wet last winter and spring, then too dry through the
summer. Then, just when farmers
began hoping for sunny days to mature the crop, came cloud-
laden cold fronts.
“We’d hoped the rain from Hurricane Earl would help fill
out the nuts. But it
ended up just knocking a lot of them off the trees and even
tearing off limbs,”
Crocker said. Hurricane Georges followed soon after and
didn’t offer pecan farmers any
relief, either.
Rain at the wrong times increased disease problems in
pecan orchards.
“It’s just been a bad year,” he said. “Not only do we
have fewer nuts,
but the ones we have are of lower quality.”
Farmers report that nearly half of their crop (44
percent) is of poor or very poor
quality. A little more than half of the crop (56 percent)
has been harvested.
