Well, the peanut world is busy right now bringing in the crop.
Peanuts are being dug every day. Then they’re carried to the local buying point to determine the moisture and then pay the farmer. The early peanut harvest contracts were offered earlier, but they were not high enough and farmers cut back on acres.
The acreage cut back was down 27.6%. The harvested acreage is going to be down 28.8% according to USDA. The reduction they said would increase, thought that would increase the price of peanuts, but that has not happened. It’s still staying for the farmer around $500 per ton.
There are some $5.50 at certain buying points that are running with irrigation. The farmer cut back you’d think would push the price up, but the total supply is almost as big now because of the carry forward of 1,600,000 tons from last year’s crop. So we still have around, let’s see, 4,234,000 tons of peanuts available when you add it all up.
Demand, we’ll talk about that a little bit later, but right now farmers are trying to harvest those peanuts, move them to the buying point, get them graded, and find out what kind of grade they have produced this year.
Audio Reporting by Tyron Spearman for Southeast AgNet.