Contact Info
Farmers Investment Co
Nan Walden
PO Box 7
Sahuarita, AZ 85629
Phone: 520-791-2852
Fax: 520-791-2853
Contact via Email
Visit our Website
Our Website
Click below to visit our Website
Services
- pecans
- suppliers
- nutrition
About Us
The Green Valley Pecan Company is one of the world's foremost suppliers of quality pecans. Our location, in the height of the Sonoran Desert just 15 miles south of Tucson, Arizona, provides the perfect environment for pecan cultivation.
Family owned and operated since 1948, The Green Valley Pecan Company has 5000 acres of orchard and a modern on-site processing and storage plant. This means we're able to control every aspect of pecan production, from orchard operations to packaging, ensuring a consistently high quality end product.
The focus of our operation is supplying you with the cut and quality of nuts that you and your customers have come to expect.
History Of Our Company
The Green Valley Pecan Company is located in Sahuarita, Arizona on what was once the Continental Ranch. The ranch was owned by the International Rubber Company, who in the early 1900's grew guayule plants for rubber. In 1926, Ivy, Dale and Owens leased the land and shifted the crop from rubber to cotton. Then in 1948, R. Keith Walden bought the Continental Ranch and started the Farmer's Investment Company (FICO). Although he continued to grow cotton, Walden began experimenting with different crops and finally settled on pecans because they're ideally suited to the high Sonoran Desert environment. After testing dozens of varieties, he chose Western Schley and Wichita pecans for their sweet flavor, rich color and abundant yield. It took him five years, from 1965 to 1969, to plant nearly 400,000 pecan trees on 5,000 acres of farmland. The first trees started producing pecans in 1970.
Today, The Green Valley Pecan Company is overseen by Richard S. Walden, Keith's son.
We'll Impress You
Pecans are native to North America. Ninety-five percent of the world's pecan crop is grown in the Sunbelt region of the United States, where the combination of year-round sunshine, warmth and moisture provide the perfect climate.The word "pecan" is Algonquin meaning "any nut requiring a stone to crack." Originating in central and eastern North America and the river valley of Mexico, pecans were widely used by Native Americans as a major food source.
Spanish colonists first cultivated pecan trees in northern Mexico in the early 1700's. By the late 1770's the economic potential of pecans was realized by French and Spanish colonists settling along the Gulf of Mexico. By 1802 the French began exporting pecans to the West Indies. During the 1700's and the early 1800's in San Antonio Texas the wild pecan harvest was more valuable than row crops such as cotton.
Commercial Cultivation
In 1822 Abner Landrum of South Carolina discovered a pecan budding technique. Then, in Louisiana in 1846 an African-American slave gardener named Antoine successfully propagated pecans by grafting a superior wild pecan to seedling pecan stocks. It wasn't until the 1880's however, that the propagation of pecans on commercial level began.
