Darrell Sparks
Department of Horticulture
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602

Georgia’s population is increasing rapidly. During the 1990s, Georgia’s population grew 26% which was twice the rate for the U.S. From 1995 to 2000, Georgia’s population increased 11% which again was twice the rate of the U.S. The U. S. Census Bureau estimates that 40% of Georgia’s population increase came from a natural increase and that 60% came from migration from other states and countries. Four of the top ten-fastest growing counties in the U. S are on the edges of Atlanta (U. S Census Bureau, 2005).

The population boom in Georgia is not restricted to the Atlanta area. During the 1990s, very few of Georgia’s 159 counties declined in population. Each day 50 acres of farmland and open space are lost to development in Georgia (Bouvier and Stein, 2001). These losses are expected to multiply because, if current trends continue, Georgia’s population will increase 24% over the 2000 level by 2015 (Georgia County Guide, 1999-05).

The changing landscape of Georgia rural areas is evidenced by the mushrooming of subdivisions. Recently, subdivisions have been developed in pecan orchards in Lee, Houston, and Peach counties. From 1999 to 2005, Georgia’s pecan acreage has remained mainly constant at about 141 thousand acres (Table 1), suggesting new plantings (U. S. Census Bur., 2005) are currently offsetting losses in acreage. However, during the same time period there was a net loss of 1700 acres in counties with 3,000 or more acres of pecan (Table 2). The loss of pecan acreage is expected to be substantial within a few years in pecan counties with exceptionally high projected growth rates, such as Lee and Houston at 48 and 45%, respectively. Likewise, continued losses in pecan acreage are probable in Peach County and losses may also occur in other counties with growth rates similar to Peach, such as Thomas (Table 2).

Table 1 indicates that Georgia’s pecan acreage is about 141 thousand, which excludes counties with less than 100 acres. The Census of Agriculture estimate is 129 thousand (U. S. Census Bur., 2002) which includes all pecans regardless of the size of the planting. A University of Georgia survey estimated the pecan acreage at about 87 thousand (Florkowski et al, 2000). This study excluded orchards of less than 20 acres. Several factors apparently contribute to the discrepancy among estimates. These include the degree of accuracy of the acreage reported by Georgia County Guide (Table 1 and 2), the hesitance to fully share information with government agencies and especially Federal agencies, failure of a survey to contact all growers, lack of grower response to the survey, differential restrictions imposed on the surveys, and surveys based on tree counts vs. actual acres of pecan. Historically, the U. S. Census of Agriculture reported pecans as number of trees. Tree counts are misleading as a pecan orchard originally planted at 20 trees per acre may now have, depending on the level of tree thinning, as few as 25% of the original trees while the acres of pecan have remained the same. Census of Agriculture now reports pecan as acres, not tree counts. Regardless of the problems associated the estimation of pecan acreage and which estimate is correct, if any, Georgia’s acreage is in a state of flux.

Literature Cited

Bouvier, L. and S. M. Stein. 2001. Georgia’s dilemma: the unintended consequences of population growth. http://www.npg.org/ga_poll/georgia.html.
Florkowski, W. J., T. F. Crocker, G. Humphries, and H. Witt. 2000. Pecan acreage or commercial pecan acreage? The Pecan Grower 22(2):60.
Georgia County Guide. 1999 - 05. http://www.georgiastats.uga.edu/sasweb/cgi-bin/broker.
U.S. Census Bur. 2002. http://151.121.3.33:8080/Census/Pull_Data_Census
U. S. Census Bur. 2005. http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/13000.html