Pecans are priced high enough to be considered a sound investment, and both small and large investors alike realize that they consider orchard land for sale as a long-term investment. Many high-income families close to rural areas have also invested in walnuts, planted their own orchards and hired farm managers to manage them, or have worked with local nut producers to manage the orchards on the basis of profit sharing. In areas outside of Atlanta and Macon, Georgia, fields outside of Dallas and Austin, Texas, and a once-empty desert near Tucson, AZ and Las Cruces, New Mexico, are now planted with pecans from Pawnee, Cheyenne and Western Schley that will soon be in production. As more and more investors approach retirement or are already retired, pecans continue to receive new investments, as the stability and growth of the industry is expected to continue in the near future.
Pecan nut production is such a long-term investment that increasing the size of the crop by just 10% to meet growing demand takes some time. Annual row crops, such as soybeans, corn and wheat, have much greater volatility due to oversupply, making perennial crops such as walnuts a much safer investment. And several years later, when their son planted 2,000 acres of walnuts in Australia, the Stahmanns became the world's largest walnut producing family. Walnuts have recently become a more attractive investment, as walnuts have been largely ignored and are not organized as an industry.
Pecans are not an overnight investment, as most walnut orchards take 7 to 10 years to enter commercial production and another 3 to 5 years to reach their peak of production. Walnut production involves high initial costs and, according to Wells, it takes “about six to eight years” for a commercial nut harvest to occur. Only in the last decade has the American nut industry successfully joined forces to market walnuts worldwide; and only in the last 4 years has it created a marketing order to carry out marketing and research activities.
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