Pecan growers can increase income by storing pecans if economically feasible storage technology is available. The marginal conditions under which growers would store pecans were derived. Revenue changes due to storage and impact of storage on price variations were simulated, suggesting the price that growers could pay for new storage technology.

Previous studies have consistently indicated the anomalous result of a price inflexible demand for pecans. However, these efforts did not have an adequate measure of pecan stocks available and, as a result, stocks were either excluded from consideration or a proxy variable was introduced. A time series of pecan stocks is now available. Use of this time series in a price dependent demand function results in a flexible farm level demand for pecans. This points out the danger of excluding an appropriate variable or using a so-called “reasonable” proxy variable.

Two methodological approaches were applied to estimating the number of non-bearing trees in the absence of such data using data for the Southern USA pecan industry. The first approach distinguished between bearing and non-bearing phases of a tree life and directly estimated the number of non-bearing trees. The second focused on indirect estimating of the non-bearing tree number from changes in production. This approach relaxed the assumption of maintaining maximum yields for infinite period as used in earlier studies. Empirical applications used two data sets from the pecan industry. The comparison of empirical results suggested that the first method was more accurate than the alternative approach in predicting the number of newly planted trees over an extended period of time. Additional data collection will allow for further application of available methodology to the pecan industry.