Around the industry—snapshots of fall meetings

North Carolina pecan growers gather at NCPGA’s Orchard Tour The North Carolina Pecan Growers Association conducted its Fall Orchard Tour on Sept.11, 2021, at Ronnie’s Berry Farm, Angier, North Carolina. This was the first in-person event the association conducted in over two years because of COVID-19, and all were glad to be together. John Taylor,…

President Joe Biden’s proposed tax plan, dubbed the American Families Plan, has undergone multiple negotiations changes. On Sept. 13, 2021, the House Ways and Means Committee released proposed legislation, most of which will most likely take effect after Jan. 1, 2022. The only piece of the legislation that took immediate effect was the change in…

Over the past few months, I have been through several trainings on regenerative agriculture. I have had the opportunity to visit with several growers interested in a different way of managing their operations and the same questions keep coming up: What does regenerative pecan management look like? I do not know how I can do…

Harvest has arrived, and all the tasks that go into growing and protecting the crop have come to a close—at least for the next two or three months. At this point, it’s all about putting nuts in the wagon. But, for the Southeastern grower, harvest brings with it a new set of worries to consider….

Harvest timing is integral to pecans’ sales price and a necessary concern for avoiding fall freeze or ice storms in Oklahoma. We learned a lesson last winter when an early ice storm hit central Oklahoma, causing severe limb damage before many growers harvest. This event caused both a long-term loss of production from damaged trees…

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Oct. 28 an investment of more than $243 million in grants to support specialty crops, including fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery crops through two USDA programs—the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and the Specialty Crop Research Initiative grants program. USDA is investing $169.9 million through the…

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico—Over the last half-decade, New Mexico State University has continuously been building up a collegiately licensed collection of consumables. On Friday, Oct. 15, New Mexico State University added another item on its ever-expanding list and branched out from beverages to food in the process. Collaborating with Legacy Pecans, a Mesilla-based retailer, NM…

SAHUARITA, Ariz.—Below is a statement from Dick Walden concerning the passing of Bruce  Caris, former FICO/Green Valley Pecan President and Chief Operating Officer. Recently, surrounded by his family, we lost a leader in the pecan industry and one of the finest people I know—Bruce Caris. Bruce served as President and Chief Operating Officer of the…

This week found me browsing through a few hundred 2×2 slides, looking for examples of diseases on pecan trees. For you youngsters that have grown up in a digital world, you missed out on slide projectors and C-41 film processing. During my search, I found a few slides taken on a Hort-418 class trip to…

Pecan South October 2021 advertisers share their products and services between the pages of this issue. Below, we present a full list of our October 2021 advertisers and their contact information.

Previous articles in this series have explored the pecan supply chain focusing on pecan producers and consumers. In this article, we shift gears to explore several tools that stakeholders within the pecan supply chain can use to consider opportunities to integrate within the supply chain. For example, a producer may be interested in expanding their…

In a project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), a team of scientists, including several from the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS), created a valuable tool for future improvements in pecan breeding by sequencing the complete genomes of four varieties…

In 2016, after years of dreaming and working to develop a Federal Marketing Order (FMO), our historically divided industry came together and established the American Pecan Council for the common goal of building awareness and demand for American Pecans. In the beginning stages of the FMO, consumer research was conducted and showed pecans lagged tremendously…

The October 2021 Classifieds feature available equipment, property, trees, services, and more from industry members. These classifieds can also be viewed at the back of the October 2021 issue.

National Pecan Shellers Association gathers for 2021 Annual Meeting in Denver The National Pecan Shellers Association (NPSA) gathered in Denver, Colorado, for its 2021 Annual Meeting on August 25 and 26 at The Brown Palace Hotel and Spa. This meeting marked the first in-person gathering for NPSA since the start of the pandemic. Attendees visited…

As has happened all too often in the last few years, another one of our premiere horticulturists has been called in for his next assignment. Apparently, the Good Lord was looking for help to rejuvenate the vast fruit gardens of heaven, and our own Dr. Josiah Wistar (Jody) Worthington was indeed the man for the…

Published from September through November, Pecan South‘s Marketing Guide provides a list of pecan buyers from across the industry who are looking to purchase nuts from the 2021 crop.

On-farm recharge is the application of available surface water to farmlands during wet years to recharge and store water in underlying aquifers for future use. Pecan orchards are especially suited to on-farm recharge because pecans are a facultative upland species able to tolerate saturated soils post-dormancy. We conducted an on-farm recharge (OFR) demonstration study on…

Dear readers, Across the United States and Mexico, producers shake trees, collect pecans, and prepare for a new crop. Shellers and buyers scour the market and make contracts, while retailers look to fill their inventories before the holiday season.  With harvest now in full swing, Pecan South kicks off our annual Harvest Photo Contest. For…

SAHUARITA, Ariz.—Farmers Investment Co (FICO) and South Georgia Pecan Company announced on Sept. 9 that they have entered into an agreement for FICO to sell its inshell pecans to South Georgia Pecan for processing. This agreement comes after FICO announced it is closing its pecan processing operations effective December 31, 2021. FICO will continue to…

Here are the 2021 crop estimates as predicted at the Texas Pecan Growers Conference, National Pecan Shellers Association annual meeting, and the USDA NASS Crop Production report, which shows utilized production for the 2020 crop. Please note that the USDA released its annual production report for 2020 in May and only publishes data for the…

Building on our domestic success From the start of our Federal Marketing Order, the American Pecan Council has been working to grow domestic awareness and support to increase demand for American Pecans, including the official consumer-facing brand, American Pecans, which successfully launched in spring 2018. From our brand launch pop-up shop in New York City…

Why are rootstocks necessary in pecan? The answer to this question is that they actually aren’t necessary at all. Pecan trees can be grown from seed and planted without grafting. Without grafting you don’t have a rootstock per se. The catch, though, with ungrafted seedling pecan trees is you don’t know exactly what you’re going…

Pecan weevils are sustained solely by the energy derived from their host, i.e., pecan and hickory nuts, so we should expect them to be experts in finding nuts. To begin to find nuts, adult weevils must move to the host tree canopy (after emerging from the soil) by flying or crawling. Those that take flight…