By Clint Thompson
One of Georgia’s biggest pecan crops in recent years is expected to drop significantly in 2021. Georgia’s crop that netted 147.5 million pounds is only expected to produce about half of that this fall, due to pecan’s alternate bearing cycle, believes University of Georgia Cooperative Extension pecan specialist Lenny Wells.
That’s not good news for producers who hope to rebound from last year’s market decline.
“The issue we’ve got this year is it doesn’t look like prices are going to be a whole lot better. Last year, growers got by on volume because it was a really big crop in Georgia last year. This year we’re looking at the same prices, but we don’t have the volume,” Wells said. “I worry somewhat about this year especially for growers, whose majority of their production is old, large trees. Those are the ones that will really have a pretty short crop this year.
“We’ve got a long way to go, so we’ll see.”
If Georgia produced between 70 and 75 million pounds this year, it would be on par with its 2019 output (73 million) and 2018 output (70 million).
The United States produced 305.3 million pounds of pecans in 2020, compared to 255.6 million in 2019 and 240.9 million in 2018.