Image by Flickr user Susan Sharpless Smith Aw, nuts: Now twice as costly.

Ah, the pecan: Few things evoke Southern lore more than the soft nut and its namesake pie and sugary praline counterpart.

And thanks to a fluke in pecan v. walnut prices a few years back, the Chinese appetite for the Southern nut is booming and now consumes some 25% of the American production, nearly doubling the price and putting a damper on many businesses that embrace it.

The Wall Street Journal has a nice written and video report on the news (get that here), and The Savannah Morning News has a report on how the change is bumping Southern business (read that here).

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