The Pecan by James McWilliams

Author:James McWilliams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-10-19T21:00:00+00:00

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.

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