The state of Louisiana has a long history with pecans, in fact Louisiana along the Mississippi river is where the native pecan trees to this continent were first discovered. Louisiana is one of the states listed in the commercial production areas for the new pecan marketing order. This year’s crop however seems to have suffered dearly to adverse weather conditions. Dr. Charles Graham of the Louisiana State University Ag Center was recently interviewed by the local KTBS on the conditions of this year’s crop and gave a report of his findings.

Dr. Graham said that the crop was originally expected to be in excess of 15 million pounds but instead now believes that the crop will come in at +/- 7 million pounds, less than half of the original production estimates. When asked why the crop was expected to be so drastically short this year, Dr. Graham said it was all due to the weather, in August during the nut fill stage, Dr. Graham says the area got 12.5 inches of rain and mostly cloudy days when sunshine was needed. This in turn caused significant shuck decline which caused a large portion of the nuts to die off prematurely. Another issue with the remaining crop is now quality, Dr. Graham says that growers in Louisiana now are dealing with quality issues in the remaining crop. The original interview can be found here.