By Clint Thompson
The Georgia Peanut Commission (GPC) reminds growers and industry experts that this year’s Georgia Peanut Tour will be held Sept. 17-19 and be based out of Americus, Georgia.
Attendees will be able to observe the many facets of peanut production; from digging the peanuts to harvests, with a visit to a local buying point and trips to the University of Georgia Southwest Georgia and Research Education Center in Plains on Wednesday and the U.S. Department of Agriculture ARS National Peanut Research Lab.
David West, project coordinator for research and education at the GPC, talked about this year’s Georgia Peanut Tour.
“That time of year, all of the participants in the tour are looking forward to seeing the whole peanut process. That does include the harvesting, which is some of the more popular stops that we make,” West said. “This year we’ve had to really look for the grower that has had the right weather and right situation to do our harvest stops for the fact that we had a very wet planting season, and a lot of our growers were pushed out toward the end of our planting window.”
Tour Schedule
Following a “Hot Topics” seminar on Tuesday at the South Georgia Technical College’s John M. Pope Industrial Technology Center in Americus, the tour will hit the road on Wednesday (18th) and Thursday (19th). It will visit private farms in Dawson, Georgia, and Chula, Georgia, to see the digging and harvesting processes, as well as other stops.
Thursday’s stops will include visits to Olam Peanut Shelling in Smithville, Georgia, as well as the Locke Farm Center Peanut Buying Point in Dawson, and Thrush Aircraft and Amadas Industries in Albany, Georgia.
The tour attracts peanut industry specialists from all over the country and even some producers from across the world to learn how to improve peanut production practices on their farms.
“We’re educating the general public, and those that are attending this tour are people that are from all over the state of Georgia, whether they are involved in agriculture already or are in some component adjacent to it like lending and those kinds of things. We also have a large contingency of people coming in internationally to see our peanut production and that is providing them information that they in turn can go back and put in their production practices back in their home countries, on a much smaller scale of course,” West said.
Those interested can click here to register.