Not so in other regions. Georgia may have been the leader in the transition to cultivated pecans, but other areas of the United States soon capitalized on improved varieties as well. By 1920, the Los Angeles Times was able to report that “there seems to be little question but that good budded pecan trees, grown in the right localities in Southern California, will produce, with an ample supply of water, crops as great as the average in Texas.” A nursery in Riverside, as it turned out, was already marketing a local cultivar called the Crane, and it was said to be “bearing heavy crops of excellent pecans.” Arizona became engaged in pecan production as well. After testing 350 varieties of pecan, experimental planters concluded that five cultivars—Halbert, Kincaid, Burkett, Sovereign, and Success—readily adapted to high-desert conditions. By 1925 the state was putting about 15,000 pecan trees into the ground a year—not a huge number, but a start. South Carolina, too, jumped in alongside Georgia. By 1932 it was exporting pecans throughout the United States, especially to New York City, perhaps as a result of the heavy investment in southeastern orchards coming from New York.23
If the potential for geographical expansion during the reign of the boll weevil aided the popularity of cultivars, the ultimate appeal in cultivating improved varieties came down to the simple fact that they were proving to be quite profitable as a stand-alone cash crop. This perspective was, by the 1920s, a novel one. Even as late as the early twentieth century, close observers of the pecan trade continued to view the business as something of an economic and agricultural sideshow. Harold Hume, writing in 1906, noted the “many orchards of considerable size, planted with meritorious budded and grafted varieties,” but he also noted how “the product of these plantings is entirely used by what may be termed a private trade, either by seedsmen or by private individuals for dessert purposes.” The “export trade,” he added, was “comparatively undeveloped.” In other words, in 1906 and well beyond, pecan farming was still considered a niche endeavor. Others viewed pecan keeping as an addendum to more-mainstream work, profitable as a backup in difficult times but hardly worthy of a primary economic quest. Bacon, in 1902, advised potential growers to think about their pecan groves as they might a life insurance policy.24
It was again during these pivotal two decades, however, that this opinion began to change, at least with some growers. A pecan planter from Coleman, Texas, laid out the economic logic of taking the pecan to the level of a cash crop, or, as we’ve seen others suggest, to the exalted status of cotton:
There is a vast difference in the quality of the wild and improved pecan nuts and a consequent difference in prices. The wild varieties bring from 3 to 6 cents per pound; not much more than good wages for gathering; while the improved varieties bring at wholesale from 20 to 50 cents per pound, and some of the fancy kind, for planting purposes, from $1 to $3 per pound. Making a conservative estimate of 20 trees per acre, with an average of 50 pounds per tree, the wild nuts at 4 cents are worth $40 per acre, whereas the superior varieties at 20 cents will bring $200 per acre.25
Whereas few farmers were capitalizing upon this economic logic in 1904 (when the planter did his math), thousands of them were doing so by the early 1920s. Indeed, the nature of the industry, as well as the market it served, had changed significantly. Consider the 1928 assessment of J. D. Pope, an agricultural economist with the Alabama Extension Service. “You have seen this industry develop,” he wrote, “from the relatively low valued product of wild and seedlings trees to a six to nine billion dollar business, a substantial part of which value consists of a product of excellent quality which is growing in favor with the consuming public.” Taking a bird’s-eye view of this emerging industry, it stood to reason that economic prospects were ripe for pecan growers who were willing to embrace cultivated trees. The pecan’s “comparatively restricted planting area,” as the Los Angeles Times put it, not only “argues against the dangers of overproduction,” but it ensured to growers huddled in this “planting area” sole access to a “world wide market.” Growers were nowhere near achieving such scope, but the goal was being articulated and envisioned for those willing to follow it.26
One trend reflecting the changed nature of the pecan business—the elevation of pecan cultivation to a primary endeavor—was one of the more popular varietals planted in states that had not, before the emergence of improved cultivars, harbored wild pecans. The varietal was called, aptly enough, “the Moneymaker.” Indeed, an enterprising farmer could dedicate his career to cultivating this crop. The primary reason for this opportunity was the emergence and popular embrace of improved varieties. Thus did biological knowledge, the social politics of expertise, and the profit motive combine to challenge the fundamental nature of America’s native nut.27
CHAPTER 6
“Pecans for the World”
THE PECAN GOES INDUSTRIAL, 1920–1945
If scientific agriculture came of age in the late 1800s, modern agribusiness arose in full force after World War I. Between 1920 and 1945, American farming matured into a substantial industry led by growers who built large plantations and relentlessly produced only a single crop. A potent combination of forces—technical, political, and ideological—converged to transform agriculture in the United States from a regional-based, diverse endeavor into the most productive, economically rationalized, and mono-cropping agricultural system the world had ever seen. Hybrid seeds, tractors, mechanized plows, nitrogen fertilizer, refrigerated cars, pesticide blasters, and scores of other transformative innovations not only enabled fewer farmers to feed more people but elevated the U.S. to the status of the world’s undisputed breadbasket. When we evaluate this historical development, we tend to focus on corn, wheat, beef, pork, and other dominant staple commodities. A host of less-explored food products, however, decisively rode the wave of this revolution as well, and some of them—such as the pecan—managed to stake out geographical ground so well matched to its growth potential, so finely tuned to its biological needs, that orchardists were able to reach untapped markets by the end of World War II.1
None of this productive ingenuity came easy. As William Henry Chandler, the author of the 1928 book North American Orchards, explained, the transition from passive to active cultivation in the pecan industry was not a decision to be taken lightly. “The cost of the budded trees, the use of expensive land or the laborious and expensive cultivation of cheap hill land, the controlling of diseases and insects, and the maintenance of soil fertility,” he wrote, “make the growing of pecan orchards a very different enterprise from merely finding productive old wild trees that have survived the competition and the adversaries on unused land.” Building and maintaining a commercial orchard, in essence, was a fundamentally different endeavor, one that demanded not the peripheral interest of an agricultural hobbyist but the exclusive focus of a full-time orchardist. Not all planters were willing to make the leap. Enough were, however, to industrialize the pecan.2
Commercial pecan farming—as opposed to supplemental pecan farming—had a steep learning curve. As the social, economic, and environmental factors described in the last chapter eventually persuaded many pioneering pecan growers to embrace the inherent logic of pecan improvement, they found themselves facing a daunting array of novel challenges. Having made the leap toward improvement, they now had to master its techniques, adhere to its rhythms, and find new markets. In the era of pecan improvement, every pecan grower encountered dozens of unfamiliar questions and situations. This was especially true before the 1930s, when affordable and specialized nurseries became the norm. The first commercial pecan growers to use improved varieties would often have no choice but to improve them on their own. Which was fine with them.
This was also a time when general knowledge about the basics of cultivating pecan orchards with improved varieties became accessible and increasingly standardized. Farmers would always harbor a certain amount of suspicion and maintain decision-making leeway when it came to growing pecans, but as orchards of improved varieties overtook
passive cultivation and seedlings between 1920 and 1940, a set of basic practices came to dominate the production of commercial pecans from California to South Carolina. There was, of course, no such thing as a “typical pecan farmer,” but most commercial pecan orchards followed a general set of agricultural practices and processes. With the implementation of these increasingly uniform practices and processes, national pecan production gradually matured into a profitable, standardized, and industrialized branch of American agribusiness, routinely producing bumper crops of improved pecan nuts alongside the wild specimens that never left the market.
As pecan farmers slowly adopted grafted varieties, an extensive literature emerged to assist their efforts. At the turn of the century it was especially common for growers to abandon seedling orchards altogether and attempt to graft their own stock on their own terms—an option that was, as we saw in the last chapter, extremely important to them. For the first decade of the twentieth century, most pecan farmers served as their own inexpert, ad hoc nurserymen. While there were dozens of ways to graft, one homegrown, relatively accessible method came to dominate: a process called “patch budding.” The “patch bud”—first popularized in the 1910s—became an easy and widely embraced alternative to the labor-intensive process of climbing into and top-working pecan trees. Rather than removing the tree’s top and awaiting new growth into which a fresh bud could be inserted, a patch bud could be easily inserted into the lower bark of a young tree’s trunk, or even into one of the tree’s larger limbs. Farmers undertook this project in the early spring when the bark would still “slip,” thus allowing for its easy removal and the bud’s secure insertion. As for the budwood itself, pecan growers cut “strong, vigorous shoots”—about eight to twenty inches—from desirable trees, bundled them, and packed the bundle in sand, sawdust, or sphagnum moss until samples were needed. Great care had to be taken to keep these buds dormant until it was time for patching them, early in the spring. A sprouting bud, after all, wasn’t even good enough for cheap kindling, as it was too moist to burn.
The rule of thumb was that a patch bud should be set in young seedling trees whose trunks had yet to grow beyond six to eight inches in diameter. Farmers set the patch in a section of the tree located about four inches above the ground, either in the trunk or in an upward portion of a limb close to the trunk. Preparing the spot for the insertion of a bud graft took some finesse. First the bark had to be shaved down with a paring knife to equal lengths on both bud and stock. Then, with a budding knife (the most popular brand being the “Texas Aggie budding knife”), farmers made two identical parallel incisions about an inch apart on both the stock and the bud, followed by vertical slits about half an inch apart. The resulting square patch of bark was, like a Band-Aid, gently peeled from the stock, creating space for the bud, which was then delicately patched in. One square of bark replaced another. “The bud,” wrote one popular manual, “should fit snugly into its new location.”3
Once inserted—one manual advised to “make the transfer rapidly so as to prevent the drying out of the exposed cellular tissues”—the bud was tied down with thin string and covered with grafting wax. When the wax dried, farmers removed the string and then “forced” the bud—in essence, snipped the top of the sapling and removed competing native buds, thereby channeling nutrients into the designated graft and stimulating the release of hormones that sparked dormant buds on the graft to come alive. When the selected bud began to grow, they staked it and carefully monitored its progress.4 Other methods of bud grafting were certainly popular—chip grafting, bark grafting, whip grafting, ring budding. But the patch bud was a staple procedure upon which the pecan industry—patch by patch, graft by graft, orchard by orchard—traveled on the journey from wild to cultivated. To be sure, many forms of grafting were employed by many pecan farmers, but the patch bud was the most accessible and arguably the most common method of do-it-yourself improvement.
Properly locating an orchard was just as important as the ability to bud and graft trees effectively. While improved varieties allowed growers to plant on both upland and bottomland plots, it remained critical to the long-term health of an orchard that farmers chose areas with especially rich and deep soil. The pecan is an unusually deep-rooted and long-lived tree. As a result, orchardists were duly advised to choose land with soil that would enable the trees to draw nourishment for “perhaps eighty to a hundred years.” Assessing such a rate of fertility, farmers sought soil with a proven record of producing thirty to forty bushels of corn or one half to a full bale of cotton per acre. Another way to help ensure that soil had proper fertility for pecan production was to prepare the land by planting a season or two of a staple crop followed by a layer of green manure (rotting plant debris). After breaking the soil, churning in the manure, and waiting a month, the grower could plant the grafted saplings with a greater measure of confidence. This initial planting usually took place between December 1 and February 15.5
Setting the trees could never be done in a haphazard manner. Growers with commercial ambitions typically sought to plant on at least ten cleared acres. On such a plot orchardists could expect to plant anywhere from 200 to 230 trees. The key was to place the trees close enough to maximize density but far enough apart to allow room for ample canopy expansion. A fifty-to-sixty-foot distance was considered normal. Should one err, though, he was advised to err on the side of offering trees too much room for growth. As one grower explained, “For ultimate, maximum results, trees must have distance, and plenty of it.”6 Some orchardists planted densely and then culled the weaker specimens as they emerged. A leading manual of the day, however, disagreed with this approach, explaining, “It is better economy to allow the desired distance and then utilize the unused space with annual crops until the trees need all the room.” Either way, farmers had to space trees uniformly.7
Planting grafted trees could be physically harder than one might expect. Holes had to be dug several feet deep, usually with a post auger, because pecan saplings have unusually long taproots (in some cases, the taproot of a mature pecan can be longer than the trunk). Some farmers dug shallow holes, snipped off the taproot, and planted. For this literal shortcut, though, they often paid dearly, as such trees would subsequently not produce as well. “The tap root can be cut back to within twenty or twenty-four inches without serious damage,” explained the authors of Pecan Growing, “but better results are usually secured by leaving the entire root system, except the bruised and broken parts.” Planters were urged to keep sapling roots moist during the transfer by wrapping them in wet towels or carrying young trees to the orchard in barrels of water. Once the sapling had been planted, the topsoil had to be tightly secured around all the roots to prevent air pockets from forming and drying them out. This stage of the process was both exceedingly labor-intensive and demanding of a certain amount of finesse.8
After the saplings had been successfully grafted and entered into a gridded plot, what many considered to be the real work began—defending the trees from all kinds of external dangers. Young pecan trees remained vulnerable to a variety of threats, all of which orchardists had to diligently manage. We have already heard about the insect menace. Other common problems also included “sun scald,” a condition that afflicted trees when the canopy had not yet filled to the point that it could shade the tree trunk. There were also rodents, which, attracted to the soft bark, could easily girdle a sapling and kill it. To deal with these threats after planting saplings, farmers were advised to cover their tree trunks with newspaper. They also pruned the tops in order to keep the trees relatively low to the ground and to make it easier to spray more uniformly. Overall, these threats, which could easily undermine an entire orchard, and thus an entire investment, never waned. They warranted constant vigilance and should remind us how difficult life was for people who grew food. Such was life when working with a handful of pecan varieties rather than copses in which every tree has its own genetic identity.
Adding to the burden of the
se myriad tasks was the fact that the pecan payoff was anything but immediate. Pecans took longer to reach maturity than any other orchard tree. An orchard of improved pecans might start producing token yields after a few years, but it typically took at least eight years for trees to begin masting at full throttle and as many as fifteen years before they reached peak production. As a result of this frustrating delay, some pecan farmers diversified their nascent pecan orchards with a variety of complementary crops. Herein lay room for ample creativity (although it is a creativity that today no orchardist would remotely tolerate).
One of the most popular inter-cropping schemes came out of Texas A&M University. Agricultural scientists there had good luck planting a crop of Irish potatoes, followed immediately by a planting of sweet potatoes. “As a result of the constant stirring of soil and unused fertilizer,” explained one report, “the young trees make excellent growth under this plan.” Other farmers had notable success with crops of eggplant, tomatoes, velvet beans, soybeans, peanuts, and peppers. After harvest, the green manure could be churned back into the soil with a plow. A California grower commented that “pecan trees, with their long, deep tap roots, are relatively independent of intercrops.” One farmer was a vocal advocate of “plant[ing] his orchard to pasture and keep[ing] a herd of sheep grazing on the land.” Complementary crops, and animals, almost always worked well, so long as pecan orchardists kept in mind that “the young pecan trees are to be given the right of way over all other crops grown on the same land.”9
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