The American pecans harvest for the 2024 season began in the southern states on October 20 and will run till late November.
Despite the effect of Hurricane Helene, Georgia’s early harvest was yielding robustly at a minimum 42% and a maximum 57% meat yield per nut.
This shows resilience since Helene wrecked 90% of pecan trees in eastern Georgia’s counties of Burke and Jefferson.
In their part, Louisiana and Texas, which also started their 2024 campaign on October 20, had to battle scab disease and heat.
In Texas, production estimates are at between 28 and 32 million pounds, out of a good year capacity of 50 million pounds. This according to Monte Nesbitt, ph.D., a specialist with Texas A&M Department of Horticultural Sciences in a September report.
Nesbitt said that Texas has over 80,000 hectares under pecans but is not maximizing production because of such diseases as scab.
Further north, Oklahoma’s pecan harvest started on October 27, with the state’s farmers reporting low demand and minimal prices.
2024 Production Down 11.7%, Y-0-Y
The above low demand will eventually turn around since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s estimates future low supplies.
In its only pecan forecast for 2024 on October 11, USDA pushed American pecan in-shell production downward to 270.9 million pounds.
The report does not capture the entire effect of Helene but nevertheless shows that production will be 11.7% below that of 2023.
If the estimate comes to be the final tally, then the U.S. will have 650.9 million pounds of pecan reserves in 2025. This includes the production estimate of 270.9 million, carry-overs from 2023 at 145 million and Mexican imports at 235 million pounds.
Still, this reserve will be almost 20 million pounds below the ending stock of 2023 at 678.99 million pounds.
Thus, despite yielding robustly in certain locations, the 2024 American pecan harvest will be down from that of 2023. Below is a statistical summary of how production has fared in previous years by state.
American Pecans Production by State Statistics
The United States had a total utilized production of 278,000,000 pounds in pecan nuts in-shell in 2022. In this same year, Georgia led state-based production. The table below reflects the output of the top 4 pecan-producing states from the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).
| State | Utilized Production in Pounds [LB] 2022 |
| Georgia | 132,000,000 |
| New Mexico | 74,700,000 |
| Arizona | 39,100,000 |
| Texas | 25,000,000 |
| U.S. | 278,000,000 |
Is the United States self-sufficient in pecan production?
The United States is self-sufficient in pecan production for it accounts for 80% of the worldwide pecan harvest. However, it still imports from Mexico extra reserves to fill in the gap left by frequent production lows. In the 2022-23 season, the country exported 28% of its pecans, utilized the rest at home and imported 247,785,000 pounds from Mexico.
Do pecans in the U.S. sell shelled or in-shell?
Over 80% of U.S pecans sell in shelled rather than in in-shell condition. For instance in 2022, while 42,300,000 pounds sold in-shell, the remaining 235,400,000 sold shelled.