Virginia-Carolinas Peanut News Articles

The 2018 growing season in South Carolina was good for some and challenging for many others. If the year was a dish on a menu, it might have been a sampler platter of conditions that included some normal weather, times where it was too dry, conditions where fields were too wet, with visits from two hurricanes and frost to top it off. Contract prices were not particularly forgiving on production budgets, and overall planted acres in the state were down by about 35,000 acres compared to 2017. While it is difficult to say for certain what will happen in 2019 with all the wheels that are in motion, hopefully growing conditions will be more favorable and crop prices will improve....

As we are nearing the end of another growing season, one of the things that is often on our minds is time, particularly when it comes to deciding when it is time to invert a field. Along these lines of time, The Rolling Stones had a song called “Time is on my side”. As in the song, patience is indeed a virtue (something I enjoy reminding my daughters about), but we also know that when work needs to be done in the field, time is not always on our side. We saw a bit of this during planting this spring when the latter half of May was by and large too wet to get into the field at the time. ...

Coming into 2018, South Carolina peanut acres are anticipated to be a little lower, in and around 20%. While the elimination of generic base may have contributed a little to this, I am optimistic that in future seasons this will lead to better contract prices for farmers and add more buffer room to farm budgets. Along these lines, less planted peanut acres this year may end up helping to somewhat reduce the impact of possible shortages of chlorothalonil (Bravo) and tebuconazole (generic Folicur) on peanut disease management. ...

All in all, 2017 was a welcomed sight after two years of challenging weather back-to-back. Individual fields always vary, but for the most part fairly frequent rains were forgiving, temperatures generally didn’t remain excessively high, and South Carolina was spared the brunt of several hurricanes and tropical storm systems. It was also nice to see contract prices better than they had been in 2016. South Carolina acres were up this year at just over 120,000 acres, and our state average yield is looking to come in around 4,000 lb/A. ...

2017 has so far been good for South Carolina peanuts. Relatively frequent rains paired with seasonable temperatures have given most areas great potential for a quality yielding crop. Normally around this time I like to share results from last year’s digging date test to show how some of our newer varieties performed over a range of digging dates in South Carolina to help determine the best time to dig each variety. The prolonged drought we experienced last year coupled with this trial having been in a dryland field, however, led to unrepresentative yield and grade results. ...

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, will 2017 be the fairest year of all?” Now I don’t know about y’all, but the mirrors I’ve seen don’t do too much talking. In any event, if 2017 is anything like its ancestors, there is a good chance we will see some new things, and a good chance we will see some familiar things. One of the newer fungicide names growers might see is Mazinga. Mazinga is a fungicide mixture from Sipcam Agro that combines chlorothalonil and tetraconazole. ...

Sometimes to see how good something is, it needs to be put to the test, and that’s just what this Variety Trial was. To see what kind of performance we could anticipate from different varieties, we compared runner and Virginia-type peanut performance under favorable conditions including irrigation and aggressive disease management. While grades in the trial were somewhat lower in 2016 compared to previous years, the overall rankings were generally consistent with previous years. ...

On the whole, the season so far has been one we can work with, though we all know it isn’t over till it’s over. Some parts of the state have had to replant drowned fields from early season rains, others have had repeat visits from hungry hungry deer (worse than hippos…), but in a lot of cases we have some pretty good looking peanuts. Tomato spotted wilt virus pressure has been somewhat elevated in several areas as well, and talking with folks from surrounding states at the APRES meeting, that seems to generally be the norm this year. ...

Spring is in the air, and by now, many peanuts will have made it in the ground. This season got off to a little wet start, in part thanks to that “little boy” El Niño, and hopefully the rains have continued to mellow out by the time this gets printed. In many ways, growing peanuts is a race. We race with the weather and field conditions for planting, we race against diseases and pests (and the weather again) for timely management during the season, and we race against over-maturity, field conditions and, you guessed it, weather yet again for timely harvest at the season’s end. ...

Looking back, this year brought many challenges our way. We saw shortage of Bravo earlier in the season, a lingering drought and the insect problems that came along with it, and the rains and flooding that washed out fields, delayed harvests, and lowered grades. Some growers made out alright, many did not. I think we’ll all agree there’s no rush to see another year like 2015. ...