LAS CRUCES — Southern New Mexico's Mesilla Valley, an American hub of pecan production, helped the state lead the United States for the second year in a row.

Meanwhile, a trade war and emerging competition chip away at industry prices and the lingering devastation of a hurricane led to the lowest national production in 10 years.

Phillip Arnold, president of the New Mexico Pecan Growers Association and a pecan farmer himself, said this year's state harvest was lighter than expected at many orchards due to a lack of rain this past summer and an earlier freeze this fall.

"The summer months … are usually when we get all our moisture here," Arnold said.

In October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast New Mexico would lead the nation for the second consecutive year in pecan production in 2019, with an estimated 97 million pounds of pecans to be harvested. Arnold said it's likely the state fell short of that estimate but still led the nation.

One snapshot of that massive production is the operation at Quail Hollow Farms, just north of the city off Valley Drive. Quail Hollow is one of several farms owned by a member of the Salopek family — titans of the southern New Mexico pecan industry.

Louie Salopek, 55, own Quail Hollow, one of a dozen pecan businesses owned by descendants of the Salopek family. The family's been in the pecan business since the late 1960s, Salopek said.

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Louie's grandfather Vide settled in Las Cruces about 90 years ago after immigrating to the United States from Croatia, Louie said. Vide split pecan land up among his five sons, Louie said, and it's been further subdivided from there.

The harvest is now over for Quail Hollow, having lasted from Dec. 7 to Jan. 3. It started later than usual this year due to rainy weather throughout November.

In 2018, for instance, Salopek said their harvest was finished by Dec. 6.

'A lot of moving parts'

On the harvest's final day, Sun-News journalists were given a brief tour of the operations for the orchards at Quail Hollow and at Louie's brother Michael Salopek's adjacent farm, Five Friends Farms.

"There's a lot of moving parts getting (pecans) right from that tree to the table," Salopek said.

A unique truck called a "shaker" pivoted from tree to tree. It'd extend its hydraulic clamp, fasten it around a pecan tree's trunk and rapidly shake the tree, stripping the pecans from the branches in seconds.

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The pecans collected on the ground amid crushed leaves and fallen branches. Another vehicle called a "sweeper" used strong air pressure and an angled, rotating turbine to push the debris and pecans into condensed rows called "windrows." 

Finally, a harvester would make its way down the flat corridor between the rows of seemingly endless pecan trees and suck up the debris, spitting out anything lighter than a pecan.

The crushed leaves that covered the ground before were pureed into a brownish-green dust and spewed out into the orchard air. On the road out of Las Cruces, clouds of this dust emanate from orchards during the harvest.

Salopek said for Quail Hollow, this was an "on year," meaning the trees flourished to allow for a better pecan haul than during an "off year." This year, Salopek said he estimated his 300-acre farm could produce about 2,500 to 3,000 pounds of pecans per acre.

Quail Hollow, which Salopek's been running for two years with his son Brycen Salopek, has the capacity to produce one million pounds of pecans, he said.

In 2018, New Mexico was the largest pecan producer for the first time since 2006, producing 91 million pounds of the tree nut.

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Georgia was the leading U.S. pecan grower of the last decade until 2018, when Hurricane Michael wiped out 17 percent of its pecan acreage and led to a sharp decline in production in the state.

Salopek said he sympathized with the hard-hit Georgia farmers, saying he knows some through the industry and that they're still putting things back together.

Arnold co-owns Arnold Brothers, a pecan orchard with a cleaning plant, which is where the tree nuts go once they've been harvested at orchards.

In the pecan industry, it's all about the meat to shell ratio. A so-called "number one" pecan is about 55 to 56 percent meat to shell, according to Salopek. 

Once the pecans have been separated, they're loaded into the bed of a semi truck trailer and sent to the processing plant, where the number ones are weeded out from the rest. They're cleaned and sold to a plant that shells the nuts. From there, the nuts will be sent to "end users" such as grocers or bakeries.

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State leads nation, feels trade war effects

Doña Ana County is the biggest pecan-producing county nationwide, home to 70 percent of the state's pecans, with the Mesilla Valley being the state's leading pecan-producing region.

It's also the most valuable crop grown in the state. In 2017, the pecan crop was worth $220.8 million.

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The ongoing U.S.-China trade war hasn't had as much of an impact on the number of pecans New Mexico exports, since most of the pecans produced in the state are consumed domestically, the Sun-News has previously reported.

China tends to buy the larger pecans still in-shell, such as those produced in Georgia. They are marinated and eaten during the Chinese New Year's celebrations in late January or February.

New Mexican pecans are also harvested too late in the season to get to China in time for the new year.

Before the trade war, China was the largest foreign buyer of U.S. pecans, consuming about a fifth of the U.S. supply. After Beijing levied a 47 percent tariff on U.S pecans in July 2018, U.S. pecan exports to China and Hong Kong dropped by more than half, according to American Pecan Council data.

China now buys increasingly from Mexico and South Africa.

The trade war has driven down prices of pecans as a result. But it's not the only reason prices have been driven down, according to Arnold.

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He said although U.S. pecan exports to China have dropped significantly since tariffs first went into effect in 2018, the supply lost during Hurricane Michael helped account for the loss of demand.

The hurricane helped push pecan production in the U.S. in 2018-19 to its lowest level in a decade, according to the USDA. At the same time, Mexico's pecan production has exploded, making it the top producer worldwide.

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As America also continues to import cheaply produced pecans from Mexico, the price is driven down.

These factors helped average pecan prices in the U.S. drop by almost a quarter from 2017 to 2018, $2.33 per pound to $1.75, according to USDA data.

The pecan industry has turned inward and began promoting domestically, after a 2016 federal marketing order established the Pecan Council and created mechanisms to advertise pecans and their uses.

"It's not just a pie," said Alex Ott, executive director of the council. "It's a healthy product and there's different ways you can incorporate it into your daily diet."

Since the order, Ott said the industry has seen domestic consumption rise by 12 percent.


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