Modeling Perennial Crop Supply: An Illustration from the Pecan Industry

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.