U.S. Exports of Pecans to China have Increased Sharply in Recent Years.

About 80 percent of the pecans eaten in the world are grown in the United States, and Georgia is the country's top producer. In a place referred to as the Peach State, it's the pecan farmers who are planting thousands of new trees.

The farmers are trying to keep up with skyrocketing demand from more than 7,000 miles away, in China.

Working in his pecan orchard in Fort Valley, Ga., south of Atlanta, farmer Trent Mason leans over and fiddles with the irrigation system.

It's been an exceptionally dry spring and summer, and Mason is trying to keep his trees alive. On one side of the 2,000-acre orchard are 20-year-old trees covered in tiny nuts; on the other side are saplings, planted in January.

Read more: NPR

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