(hip hop music) - Walnuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews, peanuts.

In America, we love these nuts.

Okay, peanuts aren't really nuts, but the point is, none of these are actually from here.

There's only one nut we can buy today that's native to this nation: it's the pecan.

Wait, what?

It's peh-cahn.

Peh-cahn.

Puh-cahn.

Pecan.

Pee-can?

See, America's relationship with its native nut, it's complicated, right down to the pronunciation.

Well, there's no better way of cracking this story than to find out, pecan: how does it grow?

(hip hop music) The pecan takes its name from the native Algonquin word pakan, which means any nut that's hard to crack.

If you map the native habitat of wild pecans, which fanned out west from the Mississippi River, you can kind of see how the pronunciation evolved.

The French in Louisiana pronounce the Indian word as the French would, with the second syllable stressed.

Peh-cahn.

But as the nut moved to English speaking territories, they pronounced it with the first syllable stressed.

Pee-cahn.

(soft music) I've come to the epicenter of pecan world production, Georgia, the top producing state in the top producing nation, which is mind blowing since pecans are not native to Georgia.

But being here has given me an even more astonishing realization: most of us have never eaten a truly fresh pecan.

(hip hop music) If there's one person who knows pecans, it's Dr. Randy Hudson.

His family's been farming them for over 150 years.

In fact, they planted some of Georgia's first pecan trees, back when pecans were mostly used to feed hogs.

We're talking about a super nutritional nut with more antioxidants than a same sized serving of blueberries.

Once served to swine.

Lucky pigs.

Now the Hudsons are among a wave of farmers driving a comeback for America's long neglected nut.

Yes, this is a comeback story.

But one that takes an unexpected turn.

Hang in there because we'll be coming back to that.

First, let's go meet our farmer.

(hip hop music) Now, I have to admit, I didn't realize that there was more than one kind of pecan.

- Oh my lord, there's hundreds if not thousands.

There is a difference between flavor and between texture.

There are some varieties that are closer to one of the parents which is hickory.

Pecans are very high in very good oils.

And a way that we demonstrate that is, we take a little lighter and we light a pecan and-- - [Nicole] Wow.

- How 'bout that?

- [Nicole] It's like a candle.

- So a pecan has, in proportion to other things that we might eat, a significantly higher level of energy, as evidenced by the flame that you see coming.

You can't hardly take a grapefruit and burn it.

- Right.

- For that matter, even take other nuts and be able to stand here and get it to burn like that, with that much energy for that length of time.

- So wait, so how do you open these?

- In absence of nutcrackers, what you can do is simply take two nuts, smash them together.

(nuts cracking) - Whoa!

(chuckles) - That's a little country learning.

- That is very satisfying.

(soft music) Okay, so pecans come in a multitude of varieties, and it was this awesome, natural diversity that stood as a huge challenge to farmers because even though pecans have been growing in North America for millennia, it was only around 170 years ago that people figured out how to grow the kinds they wanted.

The nut we eat is actually the seed of one of these trees.

That little thing can grow a tree over 100 feet tall, which by the way can live for centuries.

But each nut is genetically unique.

So if you've seen our episodes on apples or oranges and of course you have, you'll know where I'm going with this.

A Stuart pecan for instance won't grow a tree that bears Stuarts, it will be some other, unpredictable variety.

And since farmers only wanted to grow the biggest, tastiest varieties, they had to figure out a way to grow exactly the ones they wanted.

There couldn't be a commercial pecan industry until they cracked this code.

And the man who cracked it was a slave.

We don't have his picture, we don't even know his last name.

But we know he was called Antoine and he was enslaved here on this Louisiana plantation called Oak Alley.

We also know that he was a very talented horticulturist, and the first person to successfully graft a pecan tree.

That means, he took a young branch from the variety he wanted and fused it to the trunk of another pecan tree, so that it would grow the variety he wanted.

Now, hop with me over to Philadelphia for a sec.

(snaps fingers) Bit windier here.

Okay, in 1876, pecans from Antoine's grafted trees came right here to the World's Fair.

His superior nuts were exhibited alongside things like Alexander Graham Bell's new telephone and the Remington typewriter, becoming America's first popularized variety of pecans.

And so the commercial pecan industry was born.

Today farmers like Randy buy already grafted saplings from nurseries and plant them in orchards.

It takes five to seven years for pecans to bear a significant harvest.

The hope of that harvest begins in the spring when the pecan trees flower, no really, there are flowers there.

They're just about the size of pencil erasers.

These are female flowers.

Each tree also grows male flowers which shed pollen.

The pollinated flowers transform into pecans that grow within green husks.

In the autumn, these husks turn brown and peel back to reveal the finally mature nuts.

(lighthearted music) When the pecans mature, farmers don't wait around for them all to fall.

They take matters into their own hands.

(lighthearted music) The nuts lay in the orchard for three to four days to dry out.

It's an anxious time.

Everything from squirrels to feral hogs love pecans, and Randy has basically laid a buffet.

His crew returns to gather the nuts into rows so harvesting machines can do their work.

By the end of the season, which usually lasts 'til Christmas, they'll process over five million pounds.

Okay, let's go.

Do it, woo!

(lighthearted music) This is the biggest thing I've ever driven before.

I think I could get used to this.

Going through a pecan tree right now, oh my God!

(lighthearted music) We did it.

Woo hoo!

I wanna do this for a living!

- [Man] Good job!

(chuckles) (soft music) (hip hop music) At the packing plant, good nuts are separated from sticks, leaves, and other debris.

They'll finish drying to less than five percent moisture before being cleaned, sorted, sized, and packed.

While pecans destined to be sold without their shells head over to the cracker.

So there's one final, crazy twist in our amazing story of America's nut.

Tell me, how do you like to eat your pecans?

In pecan pie during the holidays?

Yeah?

(record scratches) Well that's part of the problem.

Outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas, there's not yet a big demand for pecans in America.

Crazy, right?

It turns out that the biggest year round fans of America's nut are the Chinese.

And we can thank them for the rebirth of our pecan industry.

See for several decades, the American pecan market was in the doldrums.

It's only recently that Randy packed his pecan bags for China, a country that hadn't even seen a pecan before the late 90s.

But, they loved hickory nuts, a nut in the same family as the pecan, so Randy and other farmers championed the pecan as China's next big thing, and they loved them.

Now that the pecan is enjoying international fame, the U.S. government is backing a huge domestic marketing push, and farmers like Randy hope you'll go nuts for pecans as you've done for almonds.

Just think, pecan butter, pecan flour, pecan milk.

You heard it here first.

(hip hop music) Oh, you're still here.

I like that.

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