Georgia peanut crop looking good early in season

TIFTON — Georgia’s peanut crop is off to a good start, with moderating temperatures and rain coming at the right time.

If the rest of the growing season follows suit, it could shape up to be a good year for growers.

“I think right now it’s off to a pretty good start,” Don Koehler, executive director of the Georgia Peanut Commission, said Friday. The commission met Thursday and got updates from the peanut-producing regions of the state.

“This is the 31st season for me (as executive director for the GPC), and I’m still looking for the perfect one,” Koehler quipped. “We’ve got all the variations the peanut crop has usually got.”

One interesting aspect of this year’s season is the planting still hasn’t been completed in some fields 10 days into June.

“We’re a little bit late compared to previous years,” Koehler said. “If we don’t get it done by the end of this week, we probably don’t need to (plant more).”

Soil moisture, bolstered by recent rains, is good in most of the growing areas.

“That’s good because February and March, which are usually wet months for us, were pretty dry,” he said.

Koehler said there have been some stand issues reported in both peanuts and cotton, which could have been caused by a number of factors, including high temperatures.

UGA peanut specialists have reported, however, that fields that they have checked have not needed to be replanted because the density of viable plants has been adequate. It’s also helped that temperatures lately have moderated, Koehler said.

“I think things are looking pretty good,” he said. “We’re getting sunshine, and it hasn’t been terribly hot. We’re hoping the weather pattern continues. We don’t have to have any of those 100-degree days, but peanuts love weather when it’s in the 90s. And we’re hoping for more normal rainfall.”

The forecast is for 785,000 acres to be planted in peanuts this year, up from the 720,000 acres of peanuts planted last year, when the average yield was slightly less than 3,900 pounds per acre.

“Acres should be up about 10 percent in response to stronger prices at contracting for the 2017 crop,” Koehler noted. “Consumption of peanut products continues to be strong.”

Georgia is the nation’s top producer of peanuts, accounting for half or more of U.S. production each year. In 2015, Georgia produced about 1.7 million tons of peanuts, which were planted in 75 of the state’s 159 counties. Each year, the peanut industry contributes about $1.3 billion to the Georgia economy.