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DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1401

MARKETING PEANUTS1

By HAROLD J. CLAY and PAUL M. WILLIAMS, Marketing Specialists, Bureau of

Agricultural Economics

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The peanut, now a leading money crop in the Southern States,
reaches the consumer in many widely different forms. Once grown
exclusively for roasting and for feeding to hogs, the peanut is now
even more widely known in the salted form, and immense quantities
are marketed each year as peanut butter and peanut candy. In
some years a considerable volume of peanuts has been crushed and
the crude oil shipped to manufacturers of butter and lard substitutes,
soap, and salad oil. The course taken by the peanut in its journey
from the farm to the consumer, then, is necessarily a varied one, with
many by-paths.

Acknowledgment is made to C. W. Kitchen and W. A. Sherman, of the Bureau of Agricultural Eco-
nomics, for many suggestions, to unpublished data resulting from investigations of N. Menderson, formerly
of the bureau, in 1917 and 1918, and to Mrs. R. G. Tucker, Mrs. E. R. Estes and Miss Mary Hall, for the
tabulation of many of the figures used in the charts and tables shown in this bulletin.

75379°-261-1

HISTORICAL SKETCH

Few crops have experienced such a rapid growth in acreage and production as did the peanut a few years ago. A native of Brazil," the peanut was carried by early slave ships to Africa, whence it was brought to this country along with the slaves in colonial days. The Civil War gave the first important impulse to its culture. Before then the peanut was little known outside of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. When the Union armies disbanded, the soldiers carried a knowledge and an appreciation of peanuts to all parts of the country. By 1868, 300,000 bushels were raised in Virginia,3 and 11 years later, in 1879, commercial estimates placed the yield for the country at 1,725,000 bushels."

Hand work in cleaning and preparing the peanuts for market proved impractical on a large scale, and until improved machinery for cleaning and shelling peanuts was invented peanut growing as a business was necessarily of restricted importance. The commercial development of the peanut industry may be said to have begun with the erection of modern factories in Virginia. A small plant was built in Norfolk in 1876, which was increased in capacity in 1880. The second practical cleaning factory was started at Smithfield in 1880, and was considerably enlarged in 1885. Other plants followed, until the Virginia-North Carolina section was well equipped with factories having improved machinery for cleaning and shelling peanuts.

The most rapid growth in peanut production, however, came in the Cotton Belt, notably in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. The swift advance of the boll weevil from Texas eastward, with its ruinous effect on the cotton yield in many large areas, caused the farmers to turn to other crops. The peanut promised a market either directly at shelling or crushing mills, or indirectly at pork-packing plants, and a supply of a fine quality of hay. A wave of peanut growing, therefore, swept over Texas, Georgia, and Alabama, and the acreage planted increased rapidly. Scores of new companies for shelling or crushing peanuts sprang up, and many of the older cottonseed-oil mills added the equipment necessary for crushing peanuts. The citizens of Enterprise, Ala., to whom the peanut had brought increased prosperity, voted $3,000 in 1919 for the erection of a monument to the weevil, on which was inscribed the following: "In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity, this monument is erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama."

For a few years the peanut boom made money for the farmer. After the armistice in November, 1918, however, the combination of a decreased demand for vegetable oils and heavy importations of Oriental peanuts lessened the interest of southern farmers in this crop. The acreage has fallen off in the Cotton Belt, partly owing to low prices, but so long as the weevil menaces the prosperity of cotton growers the peanut is likely to be a leading money crop in the program of crop diversification now gaining ground in the Southern States. An important factor in its production is the practical freedom of the peanut plant from insect pests or plant diseases. More

Candolle, A. de. Origin of cultivated plants. pp. 411-415. New York. 1890.
Dodge, J. R. Cultivation of the peanut. In Rpt. Comr. Agr. [U. S.] 1868, p. 220. 1869. In his Repor
Worthington, C. Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea). In Rpt. Comr. Agr. [U. S.] 1879, p. 143. 1880.

of the Editor.

over, mills crushing cottonseed welcome the peanut to their communities, as it furnishes employment for their plants after the cottonseed crush is over. A tabulation of the acreage, yield per acre, and production of peanuts harvested for nuts from 1920 through 1924, will be found on page 87.

LEADING VARIETIES OF PEANUTS

At least nine domestic varieties of peanuts are now generally recognized as showing sufficiently definite characteristics to be classed separately. The Virginia Bunch, Virginia Runner, and Jumbo are all large-podded, with a reddish skin covering the nut. They differ chiefly in the size of the pod and nut. It is thought that these three were originally one variety, a running plant. A few plants having a bunch habit of growth were noticed among the Runners, segregated, and developed into a distinct variety known as the Virginia Bunch, which is generally larger than the procumbent Runner. The Jumbo has come from selected strains of large size Bunch and Runners, and can now be considered a fixed variety. The Jumbo variety is distinct from the jumbo grade, which may consist of selected large nuts from either the Virginia Bunch, Virginia Runner, or Jumbo varieties. The Virginia varieties are grown chiefly in southeastern Virginia, northeastern North Carolina, and central Tennessee.

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The White Spanish peanut, which is grown from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is the most widely distributed variety in the South. Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Texas are the leading States in its production, with lesser quantities in the Piedmont section of Virginia and North Carolina, in southern South Carolina, and with light production in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, and California. The pods are of small size, and the skin covering the nut is of a brownish shade, as compared with the reddish color of the skin of the Virginia type. The plant is upright in growth, and is harvested easily, as the pods are closely centered near the surface of the ground.

LESS IMPORTANT VARIETIES

The Improved Spanish has a larger pod than the White Spanish, of which it is a strain. Commercially, it is usually sold as White Spanish.

Other varieties include the Valencia, found in the vicinity of Wakefield, Va.; the Tennessee Red Skin and the Tennessee White Skin, grown to a slight extent in Georgia and Tennessee; and the African, which is produced chiefly in the neighborhood of Wilmington, N. C., and for this reason is sometimes called the "Wilmington.' Although locally prominent in limited areas none of these five varieties are commercially important.

COMMERCIAL TYPES OF PEANUTS

Three types of domestic peanuts have become recognized in the channels of trade the Virginia and the Spanish, already mentioned, and the Runner, sometimes called the "Georgia Runner" or "Alabama Runner" to distinguish it from the Virginia Runner, although

* Specifications for the jumbo and other grades, as defined by the National Peanut Cleaners and Shellers Association, are to be found on page 31.

the latter loses its identity as a variety as soon as it reaches the cleaning mill and becomes known merely as a "Virginia." The Runner, grown chiefly in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida is a largepodded peanut like the Virginia. It is supposed to have developed from the African variety, its appearance having changed somewhat in its new environment. The Runner was formerly grown primarily for crushing and for hogging-off, but is lately being used to an increasing extent as a substitute for the Virginia in peanut butter and in peanut bars.

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Imported peanuts in America come largely from China and Japan. During recent years, at least, Oriental peanuts appear to have been grown from carefully selected Virginia-type seed. So closely do the imported nuts resemble those grown in Virginia that even experts have no infallible way of distinguishing the imported nuts from the domestic when shelled. Unshelled Japanese peanuts, however, are usually distinguishable by the bleached appearance of the shell.

In the Boston market, unshelled Virginias encounter a slight competition at times from peanuts imported from Spain, which have long, jointed pods, containing three or four kernels, and which closely resemble the domestic Valencias. Shelled peanuts similar to the Spanish type grown in the South have recently been imported from Spain in comparatively small volume.

Peanuts from Java are occasionally seen in New York City and in Pacific coast markets. They are slightly larger than the domestic Spanish, but are used for the same purposes.

HARVESTING AND CURING

Peanuts are harvested, as a rule, in September and October, before the first frosts in order that the vines may have greater value for stock food. The vines have a slightly yellowish appearance when the plants are ready for digging, although the yellow tinge is more pronounced in the Spanish type at maturity than in vines of the Virginia type. Spanish peanuts frequently mature somewhat irregularly, and at times early formed nuts may sprout before the bulk of the crop is ready to harvest. A test for maturity that is frequently made is to dig a few plants and crack a number of pods. If the inside of the shell shows darkened veins the peanuts are sufficiently developed to dig. Soft white linings in the pods are a certain indication of immaturity. Such pods may seem fully formed outwardly, but if the crop is dug and stacked at this stage many of the kernels are likely to shrivel. And the trade objects seriously to shriveled peanuts.

Peanuts may be dug with an ordinary plow provided with a peanut point and with the moldboard removed, with a potato-digging machine, or with a special peanut digger, of which there are several types on the market. In Virginia and in the Southeastern States it is customary to dig the vines in the morning, shake off the dirt, and after allowing the vines to dry, to shock or stack them in the afternoon. The stacks are built around poles or split stakes about 7 feet high, thrust firmly into the ground. Stout crosspieces are nailed about 8 inches from the ground to keep the nuts off the damp earth and to provide ventilation. The vines are stacked evenly around the poles with pods to the center, pressed down occasionally, and capped

•Hogging-off is the practice of turning hogs into peanut fields to eat the peanut vines and root out the nuts

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