The domestic market here in the US continues to dominate the pecan landscape as percentage of total sales goes to the U.S. and the market is still relatively new. While parts of the southern U.S. have always known pecans as a staple of the American diet, it has been reflectively little known across the rest of the U.S. including the major metropolitan areas.

 

The APC identified this market early on as the “low hanging fruit” so to speak of what needed to be targeted to get the word out around the U.S. about the American Pecan. And do that they have, there have been hiccups along the way with early comes trying to game the system, and others working to keep growers from gaining access to grower paid for information, which is still an ongoing issue. But all that aside, the council has still made significant progress in marketing pecans.

 

The pecan industry set out to monitor deliveries to industry at various points and the exit of pecans from the industry to consumers plays an important role in allowing us to gauge the current demand for pecans as well as track it overt time. As we look back at the past years of reporting we can see a clear increase in overall consumption as well as the U.S. market’s continued appetite for pecans.

 

When looking at the charts we can easily see the domestic market’s increasing percentage of the pie, pun intended. From around 60% of the global market pushing up to 78% of the global market in only five years, and keep in mind this is all while increasing the global demand overall.

 

Now, I can already here the nay sayers saying,” we can’t trust the data because it is constantly manipulated.” And to an extent your right, we have seen massive changes in the data to the tune of 90 million pounds in one month (1/3 of the crop), but over the past year we have seen far less changing of the data, down to only a couple million pounds per month. And as a reply, I would say that until we have better data, this is all we have available to us.  And until we can get to the bottom of the data changing issue, this is the best that we have available.

 

The chart below depicts the yearly increase of global pecan consumption as compared to U.S. domestic consumption, click the link for more information, and charts.