Pecans are becoming more than a niche crop in California

Pecans are a relatively new crop to California, but they have some advantages for growers.

First off, almond and walnut growers have found them to be a good fit because they can use the same equipment for all three crops. Secondly, pecans will also do well in heavy soils, and California orchards tend to produce more pounds to the acre than other pecan-growing regions in the United States. A third benefit is that California growers have limited pest problems.

Garry Vance is a pecan grower, owner of Northern California Pecan Inc. in Corning, and president of the California Pecan Growers Association. Vance said California has had the advantage of better production than other pecan-growing states, but that is changing as other states are starting to adopt California's growing practices.

Vance said growers in other regions are beginning to increase their yields. There are growers in New Mexico, for example, who have as good, if not better yield, he added. And there are also growers in the southeastern United States that have significant yields. But much of that area isn't irrigated, so those growers are at the mercy of Mother Nature for water. That is a real limiting factor, and in comparison California has double their yields, Vance said.

Sam Richardson, ranch manager for the Brouwer Ranch in Durham, said the only pests growers fight in California are aphids.

"We've been isolated from all the pests they have down south," Richardson said.

"East of Arizona there are some significant pest problems," Vance said, adding but because of a quarantine on pecans from those areas, the pecan weevil and casebearer have been kept out of California and Arizona.

There is an issue with unethical brokers who are bringing non-quarantined nuts by rail to Arizona and then into California, Vance said. These brokers don't want to spend the money or the time to treat the nuts, he said. The only real treatment for the pecan weevil and casebearer is a freezer treatment.

"There's no fumigation that really works in pecans because the nut has such a hard, tight shell," Vance said.

Richardson said there are other advantages to pecans for his operation.

"They do well on heavier soil, and they harvest last, so they're ready to come off after walnuts and almonds are done," he said, adding that this allows him to use the same harvest equipment.

Keith Larrabee, a pecan grower in Butte City, grows 320 acres of pecans, and he said he thinks pecans are a good fit for his operation, but he does see some drawbacks.

"It will probably take twice as long to bring pecans into production as what you see in walnuts," Larrabee said. "Typically, it's about nine years before pecans reach full production."

While pecans are a little later blooming like walnuts, they also have a longer growing season, so they mature later, which can make harvest more challenging in wet years, Larrabee said.

Vance began hulling pecans in 2003 and in essence got the show running for pecans in the North State. Having the infrastructure to process the crop and get it to market has definitely increased the interest in the area, he said.

Vance expanded his operation in 2010, and he increased his capacity to a million pounds a year.

"Right now we're holding our own," he said.

Pecans are an alternate-bearing crop, and the 2011 pecan crop was definitely off from the previous year, Vance said.

Richardson concurred, and he said he had over 400,000 pounds of pecans in 2010. In comparison, the 2011 crop had only about 260,000 pounds.

"Overcropping is the main cause of alternate bearing," Vance said.

Most California pecan growers hedgerow for sunlight penetration, which also helps control crop size, Vance said.

"Some of the large growers in the Visalia area do a crop thinning to manage the overcropping," he said. "These goofy things will set 10,000 pounds to the acre."

Vance noted that a crop of that size stresses the tree, resulting in a significantly lighter crop the following year.

"You have to limit the amount of nuts by hedgerow and topping in order to alleviate that," Vance said.

Late spring rains in 2011 also impacted nut set. Pecans have a male pod and a female flower, Vance said.

"If it's raining when the pollen drops, then it gets washed off the female flower, and they don't pollinate," Vance said. "We had some orchards in 2011 that had absolutely no crop. We think a lot of it was due to the late spring rains during pollination."

The dry fall in 2011 made it easier for growers to harvest the crop.

"We didn't finish until February the previous year," Vance said, adding the 2011 harvest was complete by mid-December.

While it was a short crop, the quality was good, Richardson said.

There are new pecan plantings in the Visalia area as well as the North State, but there are limited numbers of trees available, which prevents rapid expansion, Vance said.

Vance said he thinks if more trees were available there would be a greater push to plant new acreage.

"The last couple of years, with the extremely high prices, I think that they're (pecans) more attractive than what they've been in the past," he said.

Pecans have seen record prices the last two years, Vance said, adding part of the reason for the high prices is the pecan supply is down nationwide.

"The carry-in is pretty much gone, and with the devastating drought in Texas, they're expecting another year or two before we could ever return to enough domestic yield to bring back a carry-in, unless consumption and export trends change significantly," Vance said. "We're seeing some resistance on the export market, the in-shell market because of the high prices."

(Kathy Coatney is a reporter in Corning. She may be contacted at kacoatney@gmail.com.)