The state's No. 1 nut -- the pecan -- was tough to crack last season, and few pecan enthusiasts feel good about the prospects for the crop this coming season.
Poor weather -- especially heavy rains throughout last fall -- hammered the pecan industry during its harvest season, just as it did for the harvests of soybeans and cotton. Like the farmers of those row crops, pecan growers were hit by tariffs placed on pecans by the Chinese government in an on-going trade war with the United States.
The U.S. produces about 80% of the world's pecans, and China until last year bought most of the U.S. supply. But, last July, China placed tariffs on pecans of up to 47%, cutting its U.S. imports to almost nothing.
About 30 pecan growers and enthusiasts last weekend attended a "pecan school" sponsored by the University of Arkansas System's Agriculture Division at Grateful Acres Orchard just south of Lonoke.
Heavy rain a couple of days before -- and scattered showers on that Saturday morning -- restricted the day's activities to "classroom" work in a farm shop and forced the cancellation of tours of that farm's pecan grove and at nearby Rusher Orchard.
Scott Nadler, an associate professor of marketing and management at the University of Central Arkansas, told the growers their primary pecan market is unlikely to come back, mostly because China has rapidly increased its pecan production since 2001.
China likely will be a net exporter of the nut within five years, putting their growers in direct competition with those in the United States, Nadler said, adding it will be up to U.S. growers to find new markets and new customers.
"You cannot evaluate what you don't measure," Nadler said, explaining that there have been fewer than 50 studies of the pecan industry and its potential markets in the past 40 years.
Pecan consumption hasn't shown any growth in 20 years, he said. The trend of pecan sales in China mirrored that in the U.S., with most sales and consumption taking place during the holidays and special occasions. And, while consumers believe pecans are good for their health, it hasn't translated into increased sales, he said.
Nadler's comments echoed the summary of a study he co-authored and released in 2017: More pecan production in China, coupled with lower costs of production there, imperils the U.S. pecan industry.
Growers, along with the U.S. Pecans promotions board, "need to shift their focus from exporting pecans as a commodity" to pushing pecans as a "premium product" in candy, flour, ice cream and oils, Nadler and co-authors Alexander N. Chen and Hsin-Ke Lu wrote. "We also must begin taking steps to increase domestic demand as a buttress against fluctuating international demand and economic downturns."
The U.S. also saw a surge in pecans from Mexico, which helped keep prices low for domestic growers and consumers alike.
Statistics in March from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported:
• Pecan production in the U.S. totaled 221 million pounds in 2018, down 27% from 2017.
• Average per-acre yield was 555 pounds, down nearly 200 pounds from 2017.
• Value of the 2018 crop was put at $423 million, compared with $709 million in 2017.
• Average wholesale price per pound in 2018 was $1.91 compared to $2.33 in 2017 and $2.59 in 2016.
From 2000 through 2017, Arkansas produced an average of 2.2 million pounds of pecans each year, according to the USDA.
That made Arkansas the nation's ninth-largest pecan producer, well behind Georgia (86 million pounds), New Mexico (60 million) and Texas (49 million), among the 15 states that grow pecans commercially. New Mexico just recently eclipsed Georgia as the nation's top pecan producer because Hurricane Michael destroyed an estimated 745,000 pecan trees in Georgia in October.
Arkansas had 310 pecan farms in 2017, compared to 277 in 2012, according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, which is conducted every five years.
Acreage was up, from about 11,600 to 15,736, according to the Census, which was released about a month ago. The number of pecan orchards of up to 5 acres increased from 107 to 131. The number of orchards of 25 acres to 99 acres increased from 41 to 56 between 2012 and 2017. The number of orchards of more than 100 acres increased from 25 to 32
For a time, the USDA stopped collecting pecan data from all but the largest producers of the nut. That work has resumed, but a report on Arkansas' 2018-19 pecan season hasn't been released yet, said Robert "Crash" Carruthers, owner and operator of Pecan Arkansas, a 160-acre orchard along the Arkansas River bottoms near Morrilton.
Carruthers, who also is chairman of the advisory Arkansas Agriculture Board, was a row-crop farmer until he turned to pecans in 1995. (It takes eight to 10 years for a tree to produce a crop.)
The tipping point for Carruthers, to go from row crops to pecans, was the impact of President Jimmy Carter's decision in 1980 to place an embargo on U.S. grain sales to the Soviet Union, in retaliation for that country's invasion of Afghanistan a year earlier. The Soviets turned to other nations for grain.
"We never got that market back," Carruthers said. "That's been 40 years. It will be the same for the pecan market."
The Chinese turned to U.S. pecans about a decade ago after the walnut crop in Asia failed, he said. Pecans that had been selling at wholesale for $1.25 or $1.50 a pound jumped to $3, he said.
Carruthers said he usually harvests 250,000 pounds of pecans a year. This year's harvest brought just 33,000 pounds. "Most weren't worth picking up," he said. "Too much water and too little sunshine."
Carruthers said his variety of pecans brought $3 a pound wholesale in May, then $2.44 a pound because of tariffs. They were going for $2.24 a pound one day last week.
Asked recently to sum up the 2018-2019 pecan season, Dan Chapman, a horticulturist and resident director of the UA's fruit-and-nut research station at Clarksville, said, "lousy."
"Quality is down and production is down," Chapman said. "Usually, those don't correspond at the same time -- it's one way or the other. Usually, a small crop brings better prices, but this year it's been poor quality, poor production, poor price -- three whammies for a pecan grower."
Phillip Nelson, a pecan hobbyist and former owner of The Nut House, a processing plant in North Little Rock, said he is mystified by inconsistencies in the most recent crop. "If I had an answer I could go on a speaking tour and make me some money," Nelson, 77, said earlier this year, toward the end of the pecan season.
"I have excellent quality at my little orchard but about half the quantity I normally have," he said. "Other people I hear from, they're not having the quality or the quantity."
SundayMonday Business on 05/12/2019