South Georgia, Florida, and Alabama are now preparing for peanut harvest time.
The growers are keeping a close eye on the skies, trying to make sure they get back into the field, and the global markets navigating a highly complicated crop season. While Georgia comfortably leads the nation in peanut production, maintaining the dominance this season requires farmers to manage delayed field schedules, late season plant diseases, and international trade pressures. The 2026 peanut crop got off to a difficult start.
According to Scott Mumford of the University of Georgia, he said the wet May delayed planting for roughly half of the state’s peanut crop. Despite these early setbacks, sporadic summer rains have turned the crop around, and the outlook looks a little bit better. But it’s almost like two crops, one early, one late.
The crop has improved dramatically, he said, over the last month and a half with the idea that we’ve been getting more rain in most all areas. It’s been sporadic, he said, which means that we’re going to have some areas in the state that are still extremely dry, and the crop is struggling a little bit in those areas. It was about six to four percent of the acres are irrigated this year.
Audio Reporting by Tyron Spearman for Southeast AgNet.