SOGGY SUMMER - It’s that time of year for Pecans as you can see people everywhere searching grounds around trees throughout the region. For Louisiana’s commercial pecan growers..the harvest news isn’t good as this year’s harvest is expected to fall some 3 to 4 million pounds short. Professor Charlie Graham for The Louisiana State University AgCenter’s Red River Research Station explains. "Originally when we were doing our forecast earlier in the year, we were estimating that Louisiana would have about a 15 million pound crop. But since that time, we've had a number of issues that have caused that crop to be decreased in size." According to Graham, one of the major factors causing the decrease in production was too much rain and not enough sunshine in August. "This year we had about 12.5 inches of rain here at the (Red River) station, typically we get about 2.7 inches, so well above normal. What that does to the pecans is August through early September is the time when they're filling the nut.
It's a time when they're filling out all the meat in the nut, and during that time we've had all cloudy, rainy weather. And they (the trees) really need sunshine to produce food to fill those nuts well." explained Graham. A lower-than-expected harvest can affect store prices but this has been affect by a similar situation as August 2016 had similar rainy/cloudy weather. Graham says prices were already trending higher thanks to less cold-stored pecans. "This isn't going to help the prices for sure, you're not going to see prices dropping because there's a glut of pecans on the market."
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