About 20 to 25 percent of the peanuts in America are exported to foreign countries and other areas.
The main two buyers are of course Mexico and Canada. They’re our next-door neighbors. But in February this year the U.S. exported 54,792 metric tons.
That is an increase of 49 percent compared to that same period last year. The increase was driven by strong exports to China. China has a crop that is supposed to be three times larger than the U.S. but sometimes they don’t make as many as they think.
But their buying is for mainly peanut oil and they have bought 26,054 metric tons already this year and that is up 525 percent. Otherwise the other buyers include Mexico. They are down 14 percent compared to last year for February.
Canada is down 2 percent and the European Union 27 percent down. Also the U.K. is down about 40 percent and that’s one we’re working on. Japan was up 7 percent and notable that Malaysia was up about 2,700 pound to 900 metric tons for a first buy in a long time.
So, August through August of last year to February of this year we got a decrease in peanut exports of about 5 percent.
Audio Reporting by Tyron Spearman for Southeast AgNet.