A large part of all U.S.-grown pecans come from the El Paso region. Could drought, rising heat change that?

by Diego Mendoza-Moyers, El Paso Matters
August 10, 2025

TORNILLO – Deep in El Paso’s Lower Valley, where tractors ride along the edges of roads and signs warn against would-be pecan thieves, Shannon Ivey’s pecan orchards cut an idyllic swath between the desert expanse to the north and the border wall to the south.  

The fourth-generation farmer – whose many cousins and family members operate other farms throughout the area – is fluent in the complexities of growing pecans here, where the lush orchards emerge like an oasis. At what angles should you hedge your trees to maximize sunlight? How do you prevent weeds from overtaking seedlings? What will wholesale pecan prices look like later this year? 

Pecan orchards cover just over 17,000 acres of land in El Paso County, and well over 30,000 acres in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center. That makes this area one of the most prolific pecan-growing regions in the United States, which is only behind Mexico as the top pecan-producing nation in the world, USDA data show.  

The size of pecan crops swings year-to-year, but New Mexico and Georgia usually trade places as the top two states for pecan production, followed by Texas and Arizona.  

Official statistics about the amount of pecans grown throughout the El Paso region are hard to come by because the U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t disclose pecan acreage or the number of pecans produced in El Paso County “to avoid disclosing data for individual operations.” But the fertile region spanning from the Mesilla Valley south through the Lower Valley produces around one-fourth to one-third of all the pecans grown in the United States.

Since 2017, for example, farmers in Dona Aña County have produced over 61 million pounds of pecans every year on average. The U.S. as a whole usually produces between 200 million and 300 million pounds of pecans annually. 

There’s an immense amount of science involved in producing pecans in the borderland, where the dry climate prevents fungal outbreaks that plague pecan trees in more humid climates. But, however cliché it sounds, Ivey consistently points out growing pecans is as much an art as it is a science. And every farmer does things a little differently. 

• The Ivey pecan farm, now managed by the fourth generation of the Ivey family, lies adjacent to the U.S.-Mexico border near Tornillo, July 9, 2025 (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• A young pecan tree grows in an orchard on the Ivey farm, July 9, 2025. The young trees need special care for the first few years after they are planted. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• Inside their green husks, pecan nuts will develop throughout the summer and fall on the Ivey farm, July 9, 2025. The pecan harvest generally begins in November. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• The Paso Pecan Farm cold storage faciility houses pecans from local farms as they await sale to a shelling company, July 9, 2025. Each white bag holds 3,100 pounds of pecans. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• Samples are drawn from each of the 3,100-lb. white storage bags to demonstrate quality and size to potential buyers at the Paso Pecan Farm, July 9, 2025 (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• A system of conveyor belts and complex machinery cleans the pecans and sorts them by size and quality, July 9, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• Shannon Ivey explains the system of conveyor belts and complex machinery that cleans the pecans and sorts them by size and quality, July 9, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• A well that draws water from 130 to 160 feet below the surface supplements the surface water that irrigates 600 acres of pecan trees on the Ivey farm, July 9, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• Shannon Ivey, a fourth-generation farmer, points out a green pecan husk on one of the trees in his orchard in Tornillo, July 9, 2025. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)
• Shannon Ivey, a fourth-generation farmer, walks through tall grass and weeds among the rows of his pecan orchard in Tornillo, July 9, 2025. Ivey prefers to allow the thick ground cover to lower the soil temperature among the trees. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Ivey’s relatives and neighboring farmers, he said, poke fun at his wild-growing orchard floors, where sunflowers poke through tall grasses compared with the clean and clear ground in other orchards. But in this region’s pecan groves, every detail has an explanation. 

Pecan growers are facing rising farm-related costs, such as labor and fertilizer. At the same time, the hotter average temperatures in recent years stress trees, and prolonged drought means less Rio Grande water for growers to draw from for irrigation. 

In the face of increasing challenges, including climate change, some farmers are adopting a new set of techniques to adapt, including the so-called cover crops –different grasses and plants that grow between the rows of trees – that are knee-high in parts of Ivey’s orchards. 

While many farmers don’t yet embrace the idea, the ones who do say letting ground covers sprawl cools the orchards during intense heat. And, although cover crops aren’t typically a source of revenue, they help the ground retain water for longer. That means  the cover crops help stretch already-thin water supplies.

“I’m no longer going out there between every irrigation thinking ‘I have to mow. I have to apply herbicide. I’ve got to make it look like a golf course’,” Ivey said. “I love the golf course look. But it comes at a cost. Every time you put an employee out there on a tractor, you’ve got wear and tear on the tractor, depreciation, fuel costs, labor costs, maintenance cost, right?”

When water is released from Elephant Butte in New Mexico, about 120 miles north of El Paso, farmers throughout the valley pull their allotment from the Rio Grande, which historically has been full of water from March through October of each year. But lately, river seasons have commonly run a lot shorter. While 2024 saw a close-to-full river season, this year the river began flowing in June and will only run through August. 

And there’s some evidence that, going forward, short river seasons could become more of the norm compared with the decades that followed after Elephant Butte was developed about a century ago. That’s because climate change is affecting the amount of snow that accumulates in the mountains of south-central Colorado, where it melts at the head of the Rio Grande watershed and flows into the river. 

“We’re seeing that, overall, the amount of water that will be available will be 10% lower in the next 50 years compared to the last 50 years, and that the number of consecutive years where we have less water availability will also increase,” said Alex Mayer, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who’s the director of the school’s Center for Environmental Resource Management.  

A shorter river season means less water available for farmers to flood their orchards for irrigation. The only alternative for pecan growers who want to keep their trees alive is to pump groundwater from the aquifers deep beneath El Paso. 

“If you do not have a well and your life is 100% dependent on the river allocation, you are done,” said Isaiah Ulmer, a grower who farms about 600 acres in the Upper Valley near the New Mexico-Texas state line. “They’re not going to be farming anything.” 

The groundwater here is salty, however, and even more so in the Lower Valley than the Upper Valley. 

The further east you get from the mountain range that bisects the city, the saltier the groundwater becomes. That’s why El Paso Water operates the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant near El Paso International Airport, where the utility yanks salt from groundwater stored in the Hueco Bolson to provide a big portion of El Paso’s drinking water. 

Pecan trees don’t like salt, though. If the groundwater is too salty, using it to irrigate trees affects the health and size of the pecan yield. That presents a big problem for pecan farmers. 

If a pecan tree is stressed – either from salty irrigation water or excessive heat – its nuts usually don’t develop or fill out properly. 

“Reduced or late irrigation can lead to smaller nuts, lower yields and increased stress on trees. Chronic water shortages can weaken trees, making them more susceptible to pests and diseases, and may also impact future yields,” said Kimberly Cervantes, an assistant professor and extension horticulture specialist with the Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center in El Paso. “When surface water is limited, growers may find themselves having to use more groundwater, which is often saltier and can negatively impact soil and tree health over time.” 

Part of the reason is because the salt from pumped water builds up in the ground, and over time prevents water from seeping down into the tree root system because the accumulation of salt forms “a cement-like crust on the soil surface,” Cervantes said. 

“Managing salinity is crucial for maintaining both yield and quality in pecan orchards,” she said. 

Even in the Upper Valley, where groundwater salt levels generally are lower than downstream, Ulmer said river water stays in the ground for longer and the trees drink up more of it. 

“That beautiful water flowing down that river comes with all sorts of minerals and nutrients,” Ulmer said. 

“You throw pumped water over 10 acres, I could probably walk across that field in maybe two or three days,” he said. “You throw that river water out there on that same ten acres, you’re not walking across that thing any time soon.” 

And even if the groundwater wasn’t salty, pumping water with a well is costly. Growers either have to pay for electricity or diesel fuel to run the pumps. And at Ivey’s farm, some wells stopped running properly this season, forcing Ivey to pay for costly repairs. 

Wholesale prices are the other big problem for pecan producers. Prices fell after President Donald Trump in his first term initiated a trade war with China, which prompted Chinese buyers to stop purchasing U.S.-grown pecans. That “tariff war,” Ivey said, really affected local pecan farmers.

From 2010 through 2017, pecan growers in Texas sold pecans for just over $2 per pound on average, according to USDA data. Since then, however, prices have averaged $1.70 per pound – a 16% decline. 

“I have sold pecans at or below $2 a pound in-shell for seven of the last eight years,” Ivey said. “That is unsustainable.” 

With prices relatively low, one option farmers have is to store their pecan crop in refrigerated storage warehouses, pay the storage fee and hope prices are higher within a few months. 

Beyond climate change and drought, farmers in the El Paso region are facing financial and environmental challenges stemming from the global economy and politics they have little control over.

“Today’s farmer, especially a small farmer like me, you better be on your game. You better know how to finance. You better know something about international economics. You better know about restructuring debt. You better know about working in the field,” Ulmer said. “It’s the hardest job in the world.”

This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.