There is an Arabic saying: “While the dogs bark, the caravan passes by”. In the pecan industry, this is also very true. While many have their doubts regarding the future of agriculture in South Africa due the ongoing drought, weak economy and political issues, pecan nut cultivation is taking the market by storm.
Especially in the drier, western parts of the country, pecan farming is blooming and many farmers are testing the viability of this agricultural branch. In some cases farmers are still somewhat wary, planting only a small number of trees on the sides of pivots or in smaller orchards, but the majority are making plans to grow their trees on a larger scale.
The History of Pecan Farming
One can rightly ask the question whether there is a future in the pecan industry, or whether it simply is a passing fad. One has to take a walk down memory lane and study the history of pecan farming before attempting to predict the future.
The local pecan nut industry has its roots in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. Some of the earliest pecan trees that were planted and recorded in South Africa was in 1976, when the Fish River Irrigation Scheme was completed. Michael Antrobus is recorded to have planted the first 50 pecan nut trees in the Eastern Cape at that time.
This was only the first small step in a number of developments. The first commercial research on pecan nuts was conducted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Pietermaritzburg, by horticulturists such as Prof Le Roux and Prof Nigel Wolstenholme.
The Agricultural Research Council’s (ARC) Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Crops later established pecan variety blocks in Nelspruit, Roodeplaat and at the Addo Research Station. In 1991 the institute arranged a pecan stakeholders meeting in Nelspruit, and from this the South African Pecan Nut Producers’ Association (Sappa) was born.
This story is from the August 2016 edition of FarmBiz.
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This story is from the August 2016 edition of FarmBiz.
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