The American Pecan Council now operational for nearly 4 four years now has been able to release two years worth of data to the industry allowing for a clearer picture of supply and demand for pecans both in the US market as well as in the global marketplace. 

 

The data is submitted by US handlers to the growers council and the APC staff then compile the data and release it to industry for review and use. Like any organization the data is not perfect and has to be corrected from time to time, but it is far better than anything the industry has ever had prior. 

 

With the monthly reports, the industry is able to better gauge demand, future demand, and supply capacity while better understanding emerging trends in the marketplace for pecans. This week we look at the “commitments to ship” for the last two years. 

 

Commitments to ship is the heading used in the monthly reports to identify pecans that have been sold to end users, but that have not been delivered yet. This is quite common in agriculture and other commodities offering insight into future demand for products. 

 

The Commitments to Ship data is by no means a complete picture, but it is a good indication of future demand for pecans. The data compiled for the last season gave us a look at how when used with shipment data, we can get a clear picture current and future demand and using the delivery data, we can see if any supply gaps exist or if a glutton of product needs to be marketed and shipped. 

 

The data compiled in this report shows a solid increase in future commitments for the most recent pecan season. When we look at the data month by month and compare that data to the previous season we can see a clear increase in the commitments to ship data from year to year. 

 

When we average the months and quarters we see that for the year the average increase of commitments to ship pecans has increased by 22.5% year over year. In fact only in the 3rd quarter did commitments to ship average increase drop below a 20% increase when compared to the previous year. 

Of course a simple explanation could be that sellers are not delivering product as quickly and backlogs may be piling up, but when we look at shipments we see that is not the case, with shipments increasing nearly 7% for the year when looking at the same time period. While this does not guarantee increased demand for the industry, it is a good indicator showing that increased demand is likely the cause for the increase in the commitments to ship.