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Area pecan business off this year
NEVADA, Mo. -- Vernon County has had wild pecans since the era when no one lived here but Osage Indians who used them as a form of currency, and the crop's importance has grown through the centuries to reach its current level of supplying all 50 states and a raft of foreign countries.
Showing a section of a thick 130-year-old tree with white labels indicating historic events, Missouri Northern Pecan Growers Managing Partner Drew Kimmell said some enormous trees have been here for more than 200 years.
Kimmell's company runs a plant year 'round on the northeast side of town that processes and sells 500,000 pounds a year, 80 percent of them organically grown.
The industry is a complex, delicate one with an important distinction made between Southern Pecans and the smaller northern variety with a higher oil content in Vernon, one of the top-producing counties in the state with 6,000 acres of orchards.
Agricultural officials said the annual harvest here is 90 percent complete and looking like the 35 to 40 major growers will only bring in about half of the maximum possible production of 2 to 3 million pounds. Smaller producers are often seen this time of year selling their crop along U.S. 54 and 71.
Georgia, the country's biggest grower, suffered its usual problems with moisture and fungus, so the world is hungry and Missouri Northern is working hard to ship pecans for cooking, baking and candies.
"I've got a man in Austria who's waiting for two pallets and I've told him I will get them to him as soon as I can," said Kimmell, who built the $750,000 plant in 2001 with fellow growers Wayne Harth, Joe Wilson, Max Senkevech and Kevin Hines.
Other area plants are Osage Pecans and Byrd's Pecans north of here in Bates County. "There is no normal in our business," Kimmell said.
"It's alternate bearing, which means it makes good one year and nothing the next like in 2007 when we had a late freeze in April that killed all the male flowers and kept them from fertilizing the female flowers on the same trees."
It's therefore imperative to cold-store much of the crop when there is an excellent year like 2009, and the firm uses Interstate Underground Warehouse at Kansas City to secure a supply for American specialty and health food stores and customers in England, France, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan and China.
Kimmell said area pecans, boasting the sweeter, juicier taste of Northern Pecans from the bottomland around creeks and the Osage River, are especially popular in California and Oregon.
Missouri Northern keeps six employees year 'round and nine during the fall and early winter harvest, working by hand and operating machines to shell, separate the nutmeat, pick out sticks and pebbles and put the finished product in huge round white plastic containers.
Wetting and drying processes are crucial to get the best and tastiest results. Kimmell's wife Susie staffs a retail store in the front of the building at 3400 N. Industrial Parkway, selling a variety of products including pecans by the pound and little sacks of chocolate-covered pecans.
The crop is also big in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, western Kentucky, Southwest Ohio, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Central Missouri and most of the southern states. "Pecan" is Algonquian for "a nut that requires a stone to crack," according to references.
Missouri Extension Agronomy Specialist Pat Miller said Vernon's 3,000 organic acres went through a stringent process to get certified for using methods that do not involve synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers. "We have a lot of orchards, the most in the state," Miller said.
"Pecans are in short supply all over the world and prices are high," she said in reference to the rates having ranged up to $16 a pound in area supermarkets. "We have some upland pecans, too."
Shelley Pitts, acting county executive director for the federal Farm Service Agency, said the crop "is less than 50 percent" of what it is in a good year.
"The price is fluctuating, so a lot of growers are hanging onto what they've got till they can get a better one," said Pitts. "It wasn't a very good year for farmers."
Along with corn's drought-spurred wipeout, she said, soybeans made 20 to 50 bushels per acre when 70 is a good result.
Kimmell said the pecan market has exploded in China, where advertisers claim pecans cure Alzheimer's Disease and enhance the brains of unborn babies. "It's the Wild West over there," he said, explaining that the Chinese demand zoomed from nine million pounds in 2006 to 88 million last year.
"There are no rules for what you can say on TV. Pecans are good for you, but they won't cure Alzheimer's."