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Georgia Pecan Crop Expected To Be Strong, Despite Hermine

September 8th, 2016

Tropical Storm Hermine is gone from Georgia, but some pecan farmers in the state are still dealing with its wrath.

“We had some larger trees blown down, but then we also had about 30 percent of the nuts blown out of the tree or shaken out of the tree by the wind,” said Dr. Lenny Wells, a pecan specialist at the University of Georgia.

Hermine struck South Georgia counties from the Florida state line all the way to South Carolina.

But despite the loss of thousands of pecan-growing trees, Wells still thinks the upcoming harvest will rise above last year’s strong crop, which was about 90 million pounds.

“We didn’t really expect the crop to come back as well as it had this year. But I think a lot of that has to do with the management that the growers are giving to the trees now,” said Wells.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says a third of the pecans grown in the United States come from Georgia.

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