|
| I was at a small pecan growers meeting and the grower hosting the meeting is close to Austin which is a very liberal town. He kept talking about sustainability and how he was implementing it in his orchard. He went from keeping his orchard floor clean with say round up strips down the tree rows and middles mowed to just letting the grass grow up as tall as it would like. Supposed to be good for soil health. No now he is paying guys to weed eat around every tree so his irrigation can work.
He also quit using commercial fertilizer and started using a pelletized poultry manure.
He quit using restricted label pesticides but isn't going to try to go organic becuase that just isn't feasible.
Long story short every practice he had changed was negatively impacting his yield.
We were in a severe drought this year and I assure you having waist high grass in your orchard was stealing water from his trees. Trees that were requiring 2 acre inches a week and he only had a system capable of 1 acre inch. Not to mention he is now paying the price during harvest for all that grass and the harvesting of the pecans.
He lost a lot of pecans even early in the year for not wanting to use industry standard chemicals.
He has been trying this out for 3 years and guess what. Last 3 years he has been buying pecans from me to sell to his customers because he hasn't produced enough or much of any pecans off his property.
So he is playing the word game and I guess it helped his retail sales remain or go higher. His production has suffered. But his customers are eating pecans grown by a grower that thinks it's the biggest BS there ever was.
Also he doesn't make money on his operation. He has money to play with his orchard. He isn't farming to make a living. But I am.
Edited by TexasPecans 11/3/2023 07:28
| |
|
Sustainability and Your Operation
