Business: Nutting Time

In bottomlands in bayou country, in cultivated groves across the southern U. S. last week began the harvest of what promises to be the shortest pecan* crop in more than a decade. Government estimates for the new crop are 33,330,000 Ib. compared with a bumper yield of 95,340,000 Ib. in 1935. Not one cent will be earned by the Texas nut grove of the most eminent U. S. pecan grower, John Nance Garner. Just before he broadcast his only campaign speech from his home in Uvalde, the Vice President let it be known that his pecans were this year a total failure, declaring: “I’m just leaving the whole crop for the squirrels.”

Precipitous drops in the U. S. pecan harvest are nothing new but growers do not agree on reasons. Some say that nut pests thrive so well on a good crop that they appear in legions to infest the next one. Some say that rain did not fall at the right time, others that “pecan trees are just that way.”

There are two general types of pecan, the native varieties which comprise from 85% to 90% of the annual crop, and the improved, or so-called papershell, varieties which have been grafted or selected from natives for transplanting and cultivation. Pecans grow in 37 states but eleven produce the bulk of the crop. No. 1 pecan State is Texas, whose State tree is the pecan. Native pecans are also plentiful in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi. Most of the improved varieties reach the market from Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina where tourists find almost as many pecan venders on the roadside as gasoline stations. Pecan trees grow big, old. Near Hohen Solms, La., 40 miles south of Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River, is a tree 13 ft. in diameter. Some pecan trees have had as many as 1,000 birthdays.

Small pecan growers pick their own crops whereas big growers depend on nomadic bands who go anutting after the cotton picking season is over. Threshers may be Negroes, Mexicans, half-breed Indians or poor whites, and the typical crew, made up of a family and friends, cruises from job to job in dilapidated automobiles. They camp in the groves they are picking, put in a ten or eleven hour day, spend evenings singing and dancing, like a siesta at noon, a fiesta every weekend. Threshers, who climb and shake the trees, make from $4 to $6 a day. Gatherers, who pick the nuts up from the ground or off canvas spread under the tree, earn between $1.50 and $3 a day. This year growers will pay 5¢ to 6¢ per Ib. to get the crop harvested, will sell native varieties to pecan shelters for 10¢ or 11¢ per Ib., improved varieties at a small premium. A year ago native nuts brought 4¢ to 5¢ per Ib.

Pecans were known to white men as early as 1541 when Spain’s Hernando de Soto explored the Mississippi River Valley, but it was not until after the Civil War that the nuts were used for much besides feeding hogs. First commercial sheller-dealer of any importance in the U. S. was a Swiss-born cake and candy maker, Gustave Antonio Duerler of San Antonio, Tex., who, in 1882, found a market for a few barrels of pecan meats he shipped East on a gamble. Today one out of every five nuts eaten in the U. S. is a pecan. Only peanuts and walnuts are more popular.* Peanuts contain the most protein, pecans the most fat.

San Antonio, where two sons of Duerler are still in the pecan business, is the capital of the industry, providing Texas’ third largest city with its biggest single commercial activity. A normal payroll for the 11,000workers in shelleries and shipping houses is $150,000 weekly. Electrically-driven crackers have been invented, but have not replaced hand-lever contrivances. Railroad spikes, which old Nutman Duerler’s help used to crack pecans with, have gone out of fashion, but the simple pick he developed is still used. After they are picked, the pecans are dried, sorted, fumigated, packed. Two companies, Southern Pecan Shelling Co. of San Antonio, and R. E. Funsten Co. of St. Louis, dominate the shelled pecan market.

*Pronounced “pea-can” or “pea-khan,”accent on the last syllable.

*Strong were walnuts last week in the Manhattan nut market because of the relatively high prices of pecans. Shelled pecans were 40c per Ib., seedlings in shells 12c to 12¾c, Georgia papershells 16½c.