By Clint Thompson
Fall is the time of year that pecans are harvested in the Southeast. It also prime hurricane season for growers in Alabama and Georgia.
As pecan production season transitions into harvest season, producers are praying for zero impact from a pending storm. As growers saw from storms like Hurricane Helene last year, Hurricane Idalia in 2023 and Hurricane Michael in 2018, tropical systems can have devastating impacts on pecan crops.
“It’s kind of an unspoken anxiety that we all deal with. We all know the potential is out there, but we just kind of cross our fingers and hold our breath and pray that it doesn’t come,” said Lenny Wells, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension pecan specialist.
It was estimated immediately following Helene last year that the storm devastated Georgia’s pecan producers to the tune of a $138 million impact. UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences indicated a $62 million impact to last year’s crop and $76 million in replanting costs. It was estimated that 400,000 trees were lost to the storm. Losses from Hurricane Michael to Georgia’s pecan industry were estimated at $560 million.
Growers have dodged a major storm this year so far, though hurricane season officially ends on Nov. 30.
Grower Testimonial
Helene devastated pecan production in Southeast Georgia when it moved through the region last September. That followed a similar trek from Idalia the prior year. Southeast Georgia grower Buck Paulk, one of the state’s largest pecan producers with 4,100 acres, is located in Ray City, Georgia. He lost about 26,000 trees from Helene and about 19,000 trees from Idalia; totaling 38% of his total production following both storms.
“I’m probably halfway over my life, and I doubted I’ll ever see one like Idalia because we hadn’t seen one like that before. I was thinking on average you’ll probably never see something like that again. You’ll see tropical storms but not one to Idalia’s level in this area,” said Paulk, following Helene last year.
“This one here, it’s at a whole another level. I don’t know that we’ve ever seen something like this in this state.
UGA Research
Hurricane impacts on pecan production have even led Wells to conduct research at UGA.
“We’ve done some work with some folks down at the Jones Center trying to better understand the damage that we get from hurricanes and some of the factors that influence this damage the most; tree age, there’s a window there between year 8 to 20 or so where they are most susceptible,” Wells said.
“Also, we’re seeing sandy soils where you don’t tend to lose as many trees on sandy soils. Also, if your orchard is protected by woods around it, that’s going to give you an advantage there, too.”