While the argument “this is the best data we have available” might be partially true, it is become less convincing even to myself as I continue to attempt to defend the APC’s pecan data. 

 

The American Pecan Council is responsible for collecting, compiling, and reporting data to the industry about current pecan imports, holdings in warehouses, pecan exports to various countries and other data. 

 

The idea was that we would finally have reliable data about the current position of pecans here in the US, as we sat through meetings we would occasionally here some talk poorly about the USDA data that was available and how it was always incorrect ect…

 

I now find it a laughable statement that anyone involved with the reporting of data from the APC would ever be able to criticize another entity’s ability to report reliable and useful data when their own data is this unreliable. 

 

The APC recently released their monthly report for the month of May 2023, one of the categories in the report is the current inventory of pecan handlers in the US. In the report the APC gives the current months quantity along with the previous years data for the same month. 

 

In May of 2022 the APC reported total pecan inventories at 218,474,868 lbs; in the latest report of May 2023 the number has been updated to reflect a 78 million pound increase in the inventories for May of last year. So basically for the last year if you based any decision on or utilized this number in any way, you were significantly off in your calculations or assumptions. 

As is usual the APC does not alert growers or industry in any way as to the adjustments or the reason for the adjustments, no they just adjust the data. Its sad but it is no wonder I am constantly told how the data is worthless and only meant to serve a few large shellers current agenda.