Since the introduction of the Pecan FMO along with formation of a working staff and the American Pecan industry has been able to collect more accurate data about the current supply and demand situation for the global pecan industry. Beginning in September 2018 APC staff has been reporting monthly data to the American pecan industry, the APC just released the April 2019 Pecan Position Report making it the eighth consecutive month of reporting. The report holds several interesting data points concerning shipments and current supply capacity of pecans in the US. While “commitments to ship” dropped last month by 24.1% overall (C2i)*, a point of interest is the total commitments to ship. When accumulated over the 8 month reporting period, we see that the commitments to ship have surpassed 1 billion pounds (C2i)*. The interesting part of this is supply capacity of the global pecan industry, while North America is by far the largest supplier,  the capacity has never been reported (or estimated) at 1 billion pounds. Obviously, most of these commitments are future delivery, to be fulfilled sometime in the future, the concern comes from the size of the global crop. Global pecan supply is estimated to be in the 600-700 million pound range, leaving an estimated 300-400 million pound gap. Another issue is that these commitments do not include any other commitments made by pecan exports, shellers and growers outside of the USA. This news may sound great if you are a pecan grower or accumulator with pecans in storage, but not so much if your a buyer who needs inventory to fill contracts and commitments. We are only in the first 8 months of reporting, meaning there is likely more commitments to ship and more forward contracting to be done in this crop year. With limited global supply the pecan industry may find itself in a bidding war to purchase the remaining available crop . To see a list of the reports, click here.