Las Cruces, N.M. – It’s harvest time in Doña Ana County as machinery moves through the pecan groves, shaking, sweeping and scooping up the nuts.
Commercial growers across the county will spend the next two months raking in pecans.
Many orchards use a shaker, a machine with pinchers that shake each tree, dropping the leaves and nuts to the ground. A sweeper follows, pushing the leaves and nuts to the center of rows. Then another piece of equipment scoops up the pecans.
The forecast for New Mexico’s harvest this year is for 33 million to 36 million pounds, a good crop in an off year, said Richard Heerema, pecan specialist with New Mexico State University’s Cooperative Extension Service.
Pecan trees tend to alternate between high-production and low-production years, and this is an off year, so trees are expected to produce fewer nuts. Last year’s record crop was worth $111.6 million.
Some orchards south of Mesilla lost much of their crop to a severe hailstorm in mid-September, while farms in the Hatch and Radium Springs area were damaged by summer floods.
Don Archer, who farms about 200 acres of pecans near Hatch, said his trees lost some of their nuts after heavy rain and flooding.
The problem largely was silt that kept tree roots from getting oxygen, he said.
Heerema said that while other crops are losing their profitability, pecans are holding steady.
Last year, New Mexico pecans sold for the highest price per pound of the 15 states that grow the crop.
New Mexico’s 2005 production accounted for about 24 percent of the nation’s total, while its dollar value accounted for about 28 percent. Pecans from Georgia, the No. 1 pecan-growing state, made up 27 percent of the country’s total but just 21 percent of the value.
