Scott Monfort, UGA and
Kris Balkcom, Auburn
Peanut acres are up this year in the Southeast, according to Auburn Extension Peanut Agronomist Kris Balkcom.
“Looking here at Alabama, we had increased about 7 to 10% over the year before. Georgia is up 10% and Florida is up 6% as well. Mississippi is up 25%. And you can see overall here we’re looking at 1.75 million acres,” said Balkcom during a presentation at the Southern Peanut Growers Conference. “It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen a number that high on the US peanut acreage as a whole that gives us about an 8% increase in acreage over last year.”
As for the condition of the crop, UGA’s Scott Monfort took a look at a variety of different scenarios for the remainder of the season and hopes it will be a good year in the final analysis.
“If we have 1.2 million acres in a poor weather scenario, and this is based on historical yields where we think we’ve dropped off in bad years, 2.254 million tons in the Southeast,” said Monfort. “If we have a pretty good moderate average year 2.439, but if we have a good year, we could be as much as 2.6 million. So it’s a pretty doggone good range. I think right now we’re looking pretty good even though we got problems, fighting worms and disease.”
SPGC24 Kris Balkcom, Auburn University 9:30