By Clint Thompson
Pecan harvests are on the horizon for Georgia producers. How many yields the state’s pecan farmers will produce is almost impossible to estimate, says Lenny Wells, University of Georgia (UGA) Extension pecan specialist.
“It’s hard to really put a number on or estimate Georgia’s pecan production at this point because of all the planting that’s taken place over the last 10 to 15 years. You don’t plant 10,000 acres a year for 10 years and not have an increase in production, even if you have some orchards going by the wayside,” Wells said.
“The crop looks pretty good. I don’t think it’s a record crop by any means, and it’s really hard nowadays to put a number on the Georgia pecan crop, trying to estimate what that’s going to be.”
Current Estimates
Wells noted in the UGA Pecan Extension Blog that at the recent pecan Tri-State meeting, estimates were placed on Georgia’s crop this year at 130 million pounds. Wells said any estimate would be “pure speculation.”
“The current estimate that’s out there, it may be right, it may not be. I don’t like to put a number on it at this point, because it is so speculative. We just don’t have a good gauge at this point for what the crop is going to be from one year to the next, because we have so many new trees coming into production,” Wells said.
“We also have some orchards that the hurricane took out. If you look at the actual numbers (though), the data that is out there, one year after Hurricane Michael, our acreage was higher than it was the previous year. Even though we lost a lot of acres, we were planting at that time more acres to take up the slack. We’re seeing a lot of those young trees coming into production.”