Over the last few years pecan growers in the US have set in place mechanisms that allow them to better understand their market and even more importantly the flow of their crop from producer to consumer. 

 

One issue growers have dealt with in this process has been industry special interests attempting to stand in their way by not allowing data collection past a certain point in the supply chain. Growers have been the only participants in the supply chain willing to share data while also allowing those same special interests to govern their grower funded boards. 

 

Even with all the roadblocks placed before growers in their pursuit toward a transparent industry supply chain, some new data may be emerging that could help explain why farmgate pecan prices are stagnant as demand for pecans rises in various markets across the US as well as markets overseas. 

 

 

US pecan growers on average deliver 300 million pounds of pecans each year (averaged over the last 8 years) and most of that is delivered during the harvest season from October to January and even as late as February in some years. 

 

With the US pecan crop grown all the way across the southern US from as far east as Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas to as far west as California the crops’ different varieties and climates expands the harvest season more than other tree nuts.

 

While US growers are in the orchards getting the crop harvested and delivered to market as quickly as possible, many US based shellers and importers have already begun importing pecans from Mexico. 

 

 

With the open market flush with pecans, US pecan growers are faced with attempting to sell their pecan crop to buyers who have already secured millions of pounds of pecans from across the border.

 

Some industry professionals have questioned how Mexico’s pecan growers are able to harvest earlier than their American counterparts, get the product shelled and across the border to be sold in the US market before they can even get their crop harvested. 

 

 

Looking at the pecan import numbers the US does harvest pecans faster than the quantity of pecans comes across the border in October through February but most of this earlier harvest is coming out of the southeastern US while this season Western US pecan growers didn’t start harvesting till around December.

 

By this time around 66 million pounds of pecans had already crossed into the US much of which had come across as shelled product. This has growers questioning how this is possible. Some have suggested, the only logical conclusion is that last year’s pecan crop must be being sold just before US growers come to market, as it would be quite difficult to harvest and shell pecans so much earlier than US growers can harvest their crop. 

 

The pecan industry having the minimal data collection available to us has been a good start, but until growers require participation throughout the supply chain we will only have a scattered and broken image of the market we are working to build.