Providing a new jet fuel source could be a new market for the peanut industry, one that is in the process of being evaluated by both USDA and the Navy.
“I think we owe it to ourselves that any time we can get our product into a new market that we explore these options,” said Dr. Marshall Lamb with the USDA/ARS National Peanut Research Lab during a panel presentation at the 2016 Southern Peanut Growers Conference on the potential for peanut oil as a fuel source.
Dr. Lamb told attendees that peanuts have an advantage over many other crops in that they have a very high oil content. “We’ve got an oil content of roughly 50 percent,” he said, compared to soybeans at just 18 percent and canola about 40. “And if you look at the amount per acre, peanuts are far higher than any other crops we can grow.”
Listen to Marshall’s presentation here: 
Dr. Marshall Lamb, National Peanut Research Lab
Also presenting during the session were Ronnie Davis, USDA Rural Development, and Ed Coppola, Applied Research Associates and you can listen to them below. Chris Tindell with the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy was unable to attend the conference as scheduled but another representative gave a power point presentation by phone on the evaluation of peanut oil as a fuel under the U.S. Navy’s biofuel mandate.
Ronnie Davis, USDA Rural Development