The American farmer may be one of the most resilient creatures ever created on God’s green earth and the American pecan farmer has continued to reinforce this truth with the determination to thrive over the past two years.
The American pecan farmer has seen his and her share of ups and downs over these past 24 months. The American pecan farmer has managed to move their industry forward and they have managed to do it while entering a trade war that decimated the last 10 years work by growers, while receiving the lowest price for their products in a decade, while witnessing the largest co-op scam in the industries history, while hurricanes decimated nearly a quarter of the supply, and while their own (sheller) board members import record amounts of foreign pecans, and purchase historically low amounts of American pecans. Proving yet again, the resilience of the American farmer.
With the latest release of data from American pecan farmers we get a better look at the current state of the global pecan industry, as the southern hemisphere enters harvest season.
Yesterday the American Pecan Council released the February 2020 Pecan Industry Position Report, and the data shows demand for pecans continues its bull run. Up 3% from last year the American pecan industry reported shipments for the season (Sept-Feb) at 192,372,498 lbs up 3% when compared to the same time last year.* The growth comes from In-shell pecans where shipments are up 34% while meat shipments are down 3%.
The increased demand continues to come from right here at home as domestic shipments are reported up 16% at 148,020,242 lbs, while export shipments continue to slump, currently down 25% from last year.
Handler Inventory is down 25%, while future commitments to ship are up 6%. One number that continues to stand out is the American purchases. With the loss of over 50 million pounds of pecans last season (2018-2019) the availability for American pecan purchases was significantly lowered because hurricane Micheal wiped out the crop. With that in mind we would expect to see pecan purchases in the US increase from last year simply due to the magnitude of losses from the prior year. However that is not the case, American pecan purchases continue to slump 10% even from last year’s devastatingly low numbers.
*Note – the data referenced in this article is from the most recently published data from the American Pecan Council as of 3/24/2020, and is subject to change without notice or version history.
