A difficult pecan season was challenging for all and painful for a few. Some farmers compensated for the extremely low prices that lingered all season with bountiful harvests.
However, some producers were not as fortunate. They either had a short crop or marginal crop that were amplified by some of the lowest prices producers haven’t experienced in decades.
Georgia pecan farmer Randy Hudson, who also works with the American Pecan Council, serves on the Pecan Export Trade Committee and is a member of the Georgia Pecan Growers Association, said producers who had a short crop are hurting.
“Not a lot of (the short crop), but there’s some of it. Then we had some growers with some marginal crops that would have paid for themselves had prices been 50 to 75 cents a pound higher or 50 (cents) to a dollar a pound higher. They would have been okay. They would have covered,” Hudson said. “But with the prices that we had and continue to have on marginal crops or short crops or young trees that are just coming into production, they did not cover their experiences.”