By Clint Thompson
A combination of various weather events has led Georgia’s peanut yields to decrease significantly this year.
Scott Monfort, University of Georgia Extension peanut agronomist, said between the May rains, two hurricanes and cool fall weather, yields ended up much lower than expected.
“When you talk about events that happened, everybody wants to concentrate on the two storms, but it was five storms for us, because it was things that happened all through the year that cost us 500 pounds per acre on average for this year,” Monfort said. “We’re not at 4,000 pounds, we’re at 3,500 right now for a state average. It’s the first time it’s been that low in quite a long time.”
May Rains
There were more than 840,000 acres produced this year. Monfort estimated about half were impacted by the excessive rains in May. It delayed plantings which led to a much longer maturity period than growers expected.
“We’re talking more than 50% of our acres were hit with late plantings. They couldn’t plant until the first week in June or if you did plant in May you had to replant. Those 50% of acres were probably hit the hardest when you talk about what went on,” Monfort said. “It prolonged things. Plants didn’t grow off like they were supposed to. They didn’t bloom on time. They didn’t bloom at peak like they should have.
“In September and October, we turned off (cool), which is not unnormal. We cooled off and we needed to stay warm. When it dropped off, you start adding weeks to this thing, and we ended up adding three, four, five weeks. That’s why we’re in the situation we’re in.”
Peanuts that normally require 140 to 145 days to mature have taken 170 to 180 days this year.
Monfort talked about the crop at this week’s Georgia Farm Bureau meeting in Jekyll Island. The last few peanuts that were in the ground were being harvested this week. Monfort estimated less than 1%. However, they were affected by the recent cold temperatures that impacted the region in the last two weeks; again, pointing to peanut maturity that was extended longer than it should have been.
“We always plant in June, but the problem is that it’s taken so long to mature them out. We should have been done by the first part of November to the middle part of November, not December,” Monfort said.