Wet weather taking a toll on Southern pecan crop

ALBANY - Frank Richter rides through his 600-acre pecan orchard on a four-wheeler, stopping often to snatch nuts from the ground and crack them open. What he finds inside the shells is often heartbreaking: kernels that are spongy, shriveled or blackened by plant disease. <br> <br> Richter has worked all year to produce a quality crop of pecans, known as the ``Cadillac of nuts.&#39;&#39; He sprayed expensive chemicals to control funguses. He turned on his irrigation system to provide water during the dry summer months. <br> <br> But with the harvest season under way, he and other growers across the Southeast are faced with a problem they can&#39;t control: two months of unusually heavy rain. <br> <br> After months of drought, growers welcomed the rain in September, but now it&#39;s driving them, well, nuts. <br> <br> ``I can&#39;t get in the orchard,&#39;&#39; Richter said. ``We&#39;ve had so much rain. They&#39;re sitting out there and rotting. Every time it rains, it&#39;s three or four days before you can get back in.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> There were pools of water in low areas around his orchard and the ground was still squishy from the latest downpour. He had to send his workers home because they couldn&#39;t harvest. The heavy equipment used to shake the trees and scoop up the nuts can&#39;t make it through the mud. If the pecans aren&#39;t picked at the right time, they start to shrivel. <br> <br> September and October are usually among Georgia&#39;s driest months and that typically provides ideal conditions for harvesting the state&#39;s $100 million pecan crop. <br> <br> This fall is different, and the combination of excessive moisture and warm weather is beginning to show up in the Agriculture Department&#39;s crop reports. <br> <br> Seventy-eight percent of Georgia&#39;s crop is rated fair to very poor. South Carolina&#39;s crop is even worse, with 90 percent fair to very poor. In contrast, all the crop is rated good to excellent in New Mexico, which had more favorable growing conditions. <br> <br> Pecans are grown throughout the South, often by homeowners with just enough trees to supply nuts for their Christmas fruit cakes. <br> <br> In Albany, a southwest Georgia city of 90,000, pecans are a major industry. Dougherty County, which includes Albany, and neighboring Lee and Mitchell counties, have the highest concentration of pecan trees in the nation. <br> <br> The soggy conditions and associated diseases couldn&#39;t have come at a worse time. <br> <br> U.S. growers produced a hefty 338.5-million-pound crop last year, but prices averaged only about 60 cents per pound, about half the previous year&#39;s price. <br> <br> This year&#39;s U.S. crop is expected to total 201.7 million pounds. <br> <br> Georgia produced 110 million pounds last year and the forecast is for 50 million pounds this year. <br> <br> Growers had expected the smaller crop, while their trees recuperated from their hard work in 2001. Then moisture and disease set in. <br> <br> ``Somebody needs to get word to the USDA that there are farmers in the Southeast who grow something other than peanuts and cotton,&#39;&#39; Richter said. ``We need some kind of disaster (declaration) because the pecan crop insurance is not adequate.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Richter, who produced about 588,000 pounds last year, said he had expected a 400,000-pound crop this year, but will be lucky to get half that. <br> <br> ``It&#39;s not a good time for pecan growers,&#39;&#39; said Darrell Sparks, a University of Georgia pecan specialist in Athens. ``They had a good crop last year, but the price was very, very poor. Then they had a short crop this year and they can&#39;t get them out. It is a disaster if you put the two years together. Some people are in bad shape.&#39;&#39;