By Clint Thompson
Georgia’s pecan season has come to a close. Between devastation from Hurricane Helene and market prices that did not reflect diminished supply this year, morale is low for growers, says Lenny Wells, University of Georgia Extension pecan specialist.
“It was just disappointing all the way around,” Wells said. “It wasn’t the worst year we’ve had, by far. Certainly, with the hurricane and the yield not looking like what we had anticipated and the price being off like it was, it’s really disappointing all the way around. I know a lot of growers out there that are discouraged. I’ve talked to some that are trying to make decisions, with the way that the hurricane was, about whether to plant back or not.
“It’s a difficult time for growers right now.”
Helene’s Impact
The difficulty centered around the hurricane’s devastating impact when it moved through the region on Sept. 26-27. Estimates released by the University of Georgia (UGA) College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) indicated a $138 million impact to the pecan industry. It included a $62 million impact to crop loss this year and $76 million in replanting costs with an estimated 400,000 trees were lost to the storm.
Prices started the season low and did not rise much, if at all, throughout the season. It has also sparked questions of how much of this year’s crop farmers has been reserved for storage.
“I don’t know the details, really, about what’s out there in storage. I would say there’s probably some larger growers that are still holding on to some nuts; just trying to wait and see what the price may do later in the year, but I don’t know what the volume of that might be,” Wells said.