ALBANY, GA (WALB) -
Georgia is the largest pecan producing state in the country growing about 40% of the US crop.
With growing demand from China, Georgia growers planted more than 10,000 acres of new pecan trees this year.
Now, harvest season is here and farmers have their hands full during their busiest time of the year.
"We're the leading producers of pecans and I feel like we grow the best pecans," says Century Pecan plant manager, Richard Grebel.
Grebel says Century knows a few things about growing pecans.
"We have basically 1,000 acres of pecans here. And we do some custom cleaning for other customers too. So we'll run from 3 to 5 million pounds of pecans a year through the plant."
With harvest season in full swing, the plant is busy gathering, cleaning, and getting the nuts ready to ship and sell. And Grebel says it's been a pretty good season so far.
"Sunshine runs the factory, and so we've had a lot of sunshine and by adding water. Our off years have not been off as much and our disease pressure has been less and so for an off year I'd say it's a very very good year," says Grebel.
Just one of their huge white holding bags can hold around 2,300 pounds of pecans, which can quickly add up in sales and dollar signs.
"I would say if it's a 100 million pound crop, you know it's a couple $100 million to the growers at least, and of course as it goes up the chain it gets more expensive and more money."
And that means plenty of jobs during harvest season right here in southwest Georgia, especially when the demand is growing in foreign markets like China.
"A lot of people working from harvest. It's labor intensive, the plants labor intensive, we have electric machines and everything but still it takes a lot of labor to do pecans," says Grebel.
According to Grebel, this year, pecans will sell between a $1.60 to $2 per pound and when you have 5 million pounds of pecans that's nearly $10 million for one harvest season.
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Century Pecan plant manager says it's a good harvest season
Georgia is the largest supplier of pecans in the country
In 2011, Georgia produce over 110 million pounds of pecans
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