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Pecans Hit By Hurricanes, But Growers Hope To Encourage Use Beyond Winter Holidays

By Kathleen Phillips
 
Hurricanes may have taken a big bite out of the U.S. pecan crop this year, but that’s not likely to stop the annual fall flurry of pies, candies, cheeses and other delicacies made with the popular native nut, officials said.
 
As much as 35 percent of the Georgia crop totaling 35 million pounds was lost during Hurricane Irma, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Hurricane Harvey took about 3 million pounds out of the Texas harvest.
 
But the USDA pecan report Oct. 3 indicated that shellers will start to get busy by next week as harvest picks up across the south and growers in storm-damaged areas continue to clear downed trees to access orchards.
 
“Harvest is underway, and we’re expecting a medium-sized crop in Texas,” said Monte Nesbitt, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service horticulturist, College Station. “Early price indicators are strong that demand is high, and supply is not as big as it would have been across the country.”
 
Nesbitt said the pecan is linked with fall and winter holidays because it is harvested at that time of year. But U.S. growers are planning to change the seasonal consumption phenomena through a new Federal Marketing Order, passed in late 2016, which will encourage year-round uses for the nut.
 
“Domestic consumption has been flat for decades in the U.S. People eat about the same amount of pecans they always have, and it’s not a lot,” Nesbitt noted. “We eat about a half pound per person per year, so there is a lot of room to increase that.”  
 
Some growers have helped fund state-exclusive check-off programs for promotion and research but with marginal success, he said, and then a national marketing situation emerged.
 
What changed was China, which discovered the traditional southern U.S. nut several years ago and began importing pecans in large amounts, Nesbitt explained.
 
“But soon there was a fear in the U.S. pecan industry of what would happen if this lucrative, easy, change-the-game export market goes away,” he said. “What if China plants its own orchards? The U.S. industry realized the need to do more promotion domestically.”
 
To tackle that need, he said, growers decided to band together for a federal, unified promotion.
 
As a result of the Federal Marketing Order, U.S. pecan growers and processors created the American Pecan Council, based in Fort Worth, to promote the crop produced in 15 states from Florida to California.
 
The council’s website, https://americanpecan.com/, focuses on pecans being the only native American tree nut as a point of pride but also notes it’s health aspects. “Wholesome and homegrown” and “The Great American Pecan” are two of the messages portrayed.
 
Nesbitt said investors are taking note of the new national promotion effort and acreage is expanding.
 
“We look at this as a key change in the way pecan economics work,” Nesbitt said. “Other tree nuts have had promotional efforts and changed the way they were viewed and consumed in this country.
 
“The pecan is still a true supply and demand commodity. It is very much affected by supplies and is tuned to demand,” he said. “But what other nut crops showed in their promotions is that as acreage increases so does demand. This is an uptick in terms of how pecans will be marketed and sold and demanded in the future.”
 
That leads some to think about getting into the pecan business at this stage.
 
“We (AgriLife horticulturists) interact with people who want to get in on that,” Nesbitt said. “Our annual pecan short course, which has been taught in Texas for almost 60 years, is feeding that need.”
 
The next short course will be Jan. 22-25 in College Station, he said, and organizers anticipate even more attendees due to the new marketing order.
 
Most of the orchard expansion nationally has been in Georgia thus far, Nesbitt said.
 
“We’re not having the same level of planting in Texas yet, and I am not sure whether we will. We have challenges with land prices, water availability and quality, and suitable soils. Georgia gets more rainfall than we do, they’ve got a lot of good soils and water is readily available.”
 
Georgia and Texas lead the nation in pecan production, he said. The USDA puts Texas pecan bearing orchards at 100,000 acres, Georgia at 120,000 acres and the U.S. total at 392,700 acres as of 2016.
 
Nesbitt noted that the USDA figures don’t include native pecan trees, which are estimated at 1 million acres in Texas.
 
“Those are a quiet, sleeping resource,” Nesbitt said. “If all the native acreage in Texas was put into production and renovated – and that would take a lot of work — we would certainly become the leading pecan-producing state.”
 
He said until the 1970s and 80s, Texas had more nuts from natives sold than from improved, or planted, pecan tree varieties.
 
“Prices have not been strong enough on the natives for people to make a lot of investments in them, and there have been questions as to whether this marketing effort will pull the natives along or leave them,” Nesbitt said. “The thinking is that if the promotion efforts are successful, there will be a need for native nuts to fill the gap in demand, at least for some period of time.
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Predicting Weather with the Farmer’s Almanac

Video: Predicting Weather with the Farmer’s Almanac


The Farmers’ Almanac and Old Farmer’s Almanac have been around for centuries. The two journals use secret formulas using climatology, solar science and meteorology to make long-range weather forecasts. For years those working agriculture have turned to the almanacs for answers for insight into upcoming weather conditions.

“Over the decades, centuries even, farmers have put their trust into the almanacs products with their forecasts being one of them,” Steve Hu, professor in the School of Natural Resources department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said during the Dec. 13 episode of Seed Speaks. “At least 50 years ago, (these) might have been the only forecasts available to people who wanted to use some information to make a plan or something.”

Modern weather forecasting with technology has only been developed over the past several decades, including the statistical approaches to the seasonal forecasting, Ray Schmitt, president and founder of Salient Predictions, added during the episode.

“With all of the satellite systems we have to monitor the weather, as well as buoys that are monitoring the state of the ocean, there is quite a bit of information now available with a long enough record for us to build comprehensive statistical models,” Schmitt explained.

However, building that trust in these “modern” weather forecasts isn’t easy, which is why many in the agricultural communities continue fall back on the almanacs for weather information even though there are more forecasts available made with more current knowledge of seasonal forecasting.

“Farming communities are still using the Farmers’ Almanac because they have the trust there. The federal government, NOAA the federal agency to issue official weather forecasts, they haven't done enough to build trust among farmers for their predictions,” Hu says. “You have to somehow encourage farmers to put more attention on NOAA’s seasonal predictions and less attention on (almanac) forecasts.”

The wealth of weather data and forecasts available now also give people options of what weather forecast they want to follow or the option to use multiple forecasts. Hu cautions though that this can lead to people favouring the forecast that aligns with their desired goal lor outcome.

“Farmers have to make lots of decisions about ‘Well, what am I going to plant next season? When should I harvest my crop?’ Lots of decisions have to be made and you'd like some help with making those decisions. So, people will look to any sort of guidance,” Schmitt added.

Using new forecast options or platforms for weather forecasts also requires that people learn how to use these new sources, Hu said.