By Elizabeth Sanders and Clint Thompson
The short-term and long-term futures of Georgia’s peanut crop was discussed during this week’s Georgia Peanut Tour, held in Savannah, from Sept. 22-24.
Attendees, which included farmers and industry leaders, learned about the crop’s production practices and its post-harvesting process before heading to the consumer.
Scott Tubbs, University of Georgia Cropping Systems Agronomist, talked about the tour’s importance, which is sponsored by the Georgia Peanut Commission.
“The Peanut Tour is an opportunity for us to showcase our Georgia peanut production practices. Being the state that produces the most peanuts in the U.S. and also a global worldwide leader in peanut production, we want to showcase just what our farmers do and do really well,” Tubbs said. “There’s a reason we’ve been in the peanut business for a long time.
“We just want companies that are buying peanuts to see where their peanuts are coming from. Many of these folks that are relying on peanuts for their everyday livelihood have never stepped foot in a peanut field. We want them to just be familiarized with the production practices for them to understand what the growers have to deal with in producing a crop, what all the input costs are associated with it, some of the things that they have to deal with from a management perspective. We have high-quality peanuts because our farmers know what they’re doing, and they have a very, very good support system through Extension, through their county agents, through industry partners that have a lot of investment in making a peanut crop successful.”
This Year’s Crop
Georgia farmers are on the cusp of harvesting this year’s crop. The tour allowed Scott Monfort, University of Georgia Extension peanut agronomist, another opportunity to address what producers need to consider over the next few weeks.
“We’ve got about one-third of this crop that’s going to be harvested in the next three weeks. Those guys just need to be paying attention to optimum maturity, but also how much leaf spot disease they have right now,” Monfort said. “Is that going to speed up the harvest and digging? We are having to dig a few fields here and there about five days early, and we don’t want growers to lose anything. Knowing how bad that disease is can help us determine what to do.
“While we’re harvesting, like I mentioned earlier, we also need them to keep track of the rest of this crop that they have and don’t forget about it. It still needs to be irrigated. It still needs to be watched out for diseases, insects, whatever it needs. There’s still about a month and a half of it left. We need them to do both things, make sure we’re digging when we need to and getting ready to harvest, but also taking care of the rest of the crop before we lose some on the back end.”
Long-Term Future
University of Georgia Precision Ag Specialist Wes Porter used the tour as a way to address the long-term future of the peanut industry.
“I see the future of the peanut industry, hopefully integrating; from my perspective, being an ag engineer looking for precision ag, integrating ag technology, integrating some AI, machine learning at a smart and research level where we can see that help us become more effective, more efficient across the farm,” Porter said. “I would say we already see some of our top farmers talking about using that on farm level at different aspects.
“It’s about marketing ourselves. As Georgia Grown, as this is a US-made product, how do we make sure that we’re utilizing and best marketing ourselves? This is a product that we grow here, that we do here, that we put a lot of work into. We can make sure that we survive that way, through technology, through better marketing.”