Profitable Pecans Worth the Wait in Missouri Alley-Cropping Systems

Profitable Pecans Worth the Wait in Missouri Alley-Cropping Systems

	Photo courtesy of Dan Shepherd.

On 12 acres of flood plain near Chiftonhill, Mo., Dan Shepherd helped his dad plant the family’s first pecan trees nearly three decades ago. Eighteen years later, the trees produced their first harvest. “It takes a special type of person to be in the orchard business,” said Shepherd. “You have to have staying power.”

Shepherd planted 200 more acres of pecans in the early 1980s and another 50 or so in the late 1990s. The trees in his 1980s planting won’t reach full production until 2008 or 2010.

“You have to look way down the road,” he said.” But at the end of that road lies a crunchy pot of golden nuggets. Shepherd’s pecans—more profitable than any other nut crop he could grow—are bringing $1 a pound and yielding 1,000 pounds an acre. After costs, each acre clears $600.

Income from alley crops makes the system work
Shepherd’s orchard began paying its own freight even before the first nut fell from the first tree. In the 40-foot rows between his trees, he rotated wheat – which he grew – and field corn and soybeans – which a lessee grew – for more than 15 years. Since then, Shepherd has planted bluegrass for hay in those narrowing rows. “I get $75 worth of hay an acre, and I have to mow it anyway,” he said.

The bluegrass is beautifully compatible with the pecans. Its shallow root system doesn’t steal moisture from the trees, and its fine, smooth mat makes an easy bed from which to pick up nuts. Another plus in Shepherd’s lowland location: His bluegrass doesn’t mind floods.

Pecans aren’t the only trees on Shepherd’s north central Missouri farm. On another 125 scattered acres, he grows white oaks that he logs about every five years. A half-dozen acres of walnuts, planted in the mid-1970s, will be ready to cut in another quarter-century.

So many enterprises, so little time
In the meantime, the energetic Shepherd is doing much more than watching his trees and bluegrass grow. While his wife, Jan, operates a bustling farm-based store that features their products, Shepherd sells buffalo meat, occasionally raises cull beef cows for the hamburger market and has become the nation’s largest producer of eastern gamagrass seed – a lush, native grass that is in demand by wildlife managers and cattle and sheep producers.

Every 10 or 15 years, when seed yield starts to decline in a gamagrass field, Shepherd will rotate into what he considers a frankly tedious rotation of corn, soybeans and wheat. “I don’t care for row crop farming,” he said. “I don’t think I would have liked farming without the trees. When you have pecans, gamagrass, buffalo and a store, you’ve got stuff to do all year round.”