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feeds to form a balanced ration. Experiments by the United States Department of Agriculture near Middlebury, Vt., have shown 31 that peanut meal, mixed with coconut meal, can replace oats in the ration of young horses, and may be found advantageous to work horses after they have become accustomed to the mixture.

Peanut cake is sometimes cracked into particles ranging in size from a pea to a hickory nut, and sold for feeding animals on open ranges. This cracked cake can be thrown on the ground without danger of serious trampling, whereas fine meal would have to be fed in a container.

The percentage of peanut oil in peanut cake depends on the amount of pressure exerted and on the length of time the cake remains in the press. Proper cooking is also necessary if a low oil content is to be obtained. Commercially, the oil content usually runs 6 to 8 per cent, averaging around 7 per cent.

As a fertilizer, the value of peanut cake is based on the quantity of nitrogen it contains. A high-grade cake contains sufficient nitrogen to yield 9 per cent of ammonia by analysis, and transactions are usually made on that basis. Peanut meal not only ranks above cottonseed meal in ammonia and nitrogen content, but contains a small percentage each of available phosphoric acid and soluble potash. Peanut meal has such high food value, however, that feeding it first, and then spreading the resultant manure on the ground is far more economical than applying it directly to the ground as a fertilizer.

PEANUT FLOUR

The manufacture of peanut flour from the finer grades of peanut meal, ground from pressed kernels only, was given encouragement during the war as it afforded a very satisfactory supplement to wheat flour. Peanut flour is wholesome, palatable, and nutritious. It contains over 4 times as much protein, 8 times as much fat, and 9 times as much mineral ingredients as white flour.32

In making bread with peanut flour it is customary to mix it with the wheat flour in the proportion of 2 or 3 to 10. The peanut oil in the flour lessens the quantity of shortening necessary and gives the bread a rich, nutty flavor. The chief objection to peanut flour is that it is liable to become weevily. Peanut flour is not manufactured commercially at present to any extent.

PEANUT HULLS

As the presence of large quantities of peanut hulls in or around shelling plants adds materially to the fire hazards, shellers are careful to avoid any accumulation of these stocks. Formerly peanut hulls were a waste product and used chiefly for fuel, often being blown out of the shelling plant directly into the firebox of the mill, and most hulls are still burned. Three tons of peanut hulls are estimated to equal 1 ton of coal in fuel value.

During the war several new uses were found for the hulls which increased their selling value. The most important was in connection with cleaning tin plate, and large quantities of ground hulls were

Rommel G. M. and W. F. Hammond. A note on the feeding value of coconut and peanut meals for horses. U. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Anim. Indus. Circ. 168, 2 pp. 1911.

Bailey H. S. and J. A. Le Clerc. The peanut, a great American food. In U. S. Dept. Agr. Yearbook 1917, pp. 289-301, illus. 1918. (Yearbook separate 746).

sold to tin-plate manufacturers. After the sheets of steel are immersed in the molten tin which forms the plate, they are dipped in palm oil to prevent oxidation. Then finely ground peanut hulls were formerly dusted onto the plate to absorb the palm oil. Owing to the tendency of peanut hulls to scratch the tin surface, and also because of the fire risk, tin plate manufacturers now generally use wheat and rye middlings to absorb the oil instead of peanut hulls.

As peanut hulls consist chiefly of crude fiber, they have little feeding value in themselves, but frequently serve as a filler in stock feeds. Blackstrap molasses is added to finely ground peanut hulls to form a cattle feed called "molasses meal. This product is sacked in 100-pound burlap bags and sold to stock feeders. Some poultry feeds are partly composed of ground peanut hulls. Peanut hulls are sometimes fed back into the crusher to lower the protein content of peanut meal. Large quantities are used as a filler in fertilizer. Ground peanut hulls are also shipped to Denmark, the Netherlands, and other European countries.

Experiments have been under way looking to the utilization of peanut hulls in floor-sweeping compounds, in dynamite, and in the manufacture of linoleum.

In 1917 the Forest Products Laboratory of the Forest Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, located at Madison, Wis., carried on a number of experiments to determine the suitability of peanut hulls for use in the manufacture of paper board. In the most satisfactory tests that were run the board was composed of equal quantities by weight of disintegrated peanut hulls and old newspapers. The laboratory states that the board produced as a result of the experiments was practically as good as many samples of chip board or wall board stock on the market. If the supply of peanut hulls is adequate and very close to a mill that manufactures cheap pulp products, investigators of the Forest Products Laboratory believe that the manufacture of a cheap grade of board offers a favorable opportunity for the disposal of the hulls.

OTHER BY-PRODUCTS

Any peanut by-product for which a more valuable use can not be devised, can be used in the preparation of stock feed. Shriveled, broken, undersized peanuts rejected from cleaning mills are excellent for chicken feed. The seed germs removed in the process of blanching peanuts for peanut butter, and broken pieces of nuts, have been used in the manufacture of pigeon or squab feed.

During recent years chemists have developed a large number of products from peanuts, that have not reached the commercial stage. Peanut milk, peanut cream, peanut quinine, and peanut dyes are among the most commonly mentioned of these products.

PEANUT AS A FEED FOR HOGS

It is only since the advent of the boll weevil forced the southern farmers to look for other crops to supplement or take the place of cotton that peanuts have been planted commercially to any extent outside the States of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee for other purposes than grazing or hogging-off. A large acreage is still planted in the Gulf States which farmers never expect to dig for the

nuts. When the price of peanuts is low in the fall and hogs are comparatively high, many other growers harvest their crop by hogging-off the nuts and either marketing the vines as hay or grazing them off with cattle.

In sections where peanuts are intended for forage purposes they are usually planted between rows of corn. When the corn has been harvested cattle are turned in to eat the fodder and vines while hogs fatten on the peanuts. The combination of cattle and hogs is also the best method for disposing of the crop when peanuts are planted alone for fodder. This method of harvesting is practicable only when the farms are properly fenced. When peanuts are hogged-off, most of the nitrogen that is stored in nodules on the roots remains in the soil.

By comparing the relative prices paid for peanuts and hogs and taking into consideration the cost of harvesting and picking the peanuts, a farmer can readily determine at the beginning of the season whether or not it will pay him to dig his crop for the nuts.

Hogs are often turned into the peanut fields after harvesting to clean up the pods left in the ground. When the Spanish variety is dug at the proper time the quantity of pods to be secured in this way is so small as to render the practice unprofitable. If Spanish peanuts are left too long before harvesting, however, many pods will break off and remain in the ground. Hogs can obtain considerable feed from fields where Virginia-type peanuts have been grown; and so many Georgia Runner peanuts pull free from the vines when they are being dug that hogs can be turned with profit into the fields after the Runner crop has been harvested.

Peanut-fed pork and pork products are usually of a softer texture than corn-fed pork, and for this reason hogs fed chiefly on peanuts usually sell for a somewhat lower price. Nevertheless, hams from hogs fed mainly on peanuts have become popular in several sections where many consider that they have a better flavor than hams from hogs fed strictly on corn. Although the demand for peanut-fed hams is limited, some advertised brands command a substantial premium over the corn-fed product.

IMPORTS AND EXPORTS

Although the average consumer, buying his small sack of peanuts from a street vender or at a drug-store counter, thinks of peanuts, if he thinks of the matter at all, as being strictly a domestic product, the American peanut market has been materially influenced for many years by the importation of foreign-grown nuts.33 Even as far back as the year ended June 30, 1910, a net total of 28,496,672 pounds of peanuts were brought into the United States, chiefly from Spain, France, and Japan. Receipts reached their highest point during the 12 months ended June 30, 1920, when 131,724,212 pounds were imported, most of them grown in China, although many were reexported through Japan. Of this quantity 119,817,160 pounds were

Data obtained from consular reports to the State Department; from reports by foreign representatives to the U. S. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce and from import and export statistics issued by that bureau; from investigators of the U. S. Tariff Commission; from leading importers on the Pacific coast, and by reading their files of correspondence; from The China Year Book, printed and published for H. G. W. Woodhead and H. T. M. Bell, at Tientsin, China; Trade Returns, issued by the Inspectorate General of Customs, Shanghai, China; statistical reports of the Japan Department of Agriculture and Commerce, etc.

shelled and 11,907,052 pounds were unshelled. A complete tabulation of imports and exports of peanuts and peanut oil for the fiscal years 1913 through 1924 begins on page 88. The sharp variation in peanut imports from year to year is shown graphically in Figure 39.

ASIATIC IMPORTS

The increasing demand for shelled peanuts of large sizes, which was not met by American growers as it developed, was responsible for part of the activity in imported goods, and shelled peanuts have constituted the greater part of the imports during recent years. The high prices for peanuts prevailing in this country during and following the recent war, together with the high prices and exceptional demand for vegetable oils at that time, offered strong inducements both to the importers on this side of the Pacific and to the exporters in the Orient to ship peanuts and peanut oil to the United States.

Asiatic exports are of the Virginia type. The United States Department of Agriculture, in figuring domestic peanut production, has considered that a bushel of unshelled Virginias, weighing 22

[blocks in formation]

FIG. 39.-Imports reached their peak during the World War; exports, just before our entrance

pounds, would shell out 14

into the war

pounds, or 663 per cent of the unshelled weight. The meats in Spanish-type peanuts represent a slightly larger percentage of the unshelled weight. Using that basis of comparison for all imports, however, and converting all shelled figures to unshelled equivalents, our total net imports during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1920, the year of heaviest receipts, was equivalent to 191,632,792 pounds of peanuts in the shell, a figure only a few million pounds in excess of that which would have been obtained if the non-Virginia type peanuts from Spain, Java, and other countries

had been converted on other bases. This compares with a domestic production during the 1919 season of 783,273,000 pounds. In addition to the peanuts, 165,390,713 pounds of peanut oil were imported during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1920. This called for the crushing abroad of between three and four times as many peanuts as were actually shipped here, assuming that a ton of Virginia-type peanuts will crush out 500 pounds of peanut oil. Although imports have not since reached the high figures just given, they have been sufficiently ample so that the effect of foreign peanuts on the domestic peanut industry has continued to be of distinct importance.

For a number of years China has produced the bulk of the peanuts imported into the United States, although many of the foreign peanuts appearing in our western markets in the shell are grown in Japan. The soil in which peanuts are grown in Japan often stains the pods, and to improve the external appearance and increase the market value of their goods, Japanese exporters not only wash the pods but bleach them.

Chinese peanuts are grown in a soil containing little coloring Neither washing nor bleaching is therefore necessary to make the peanuts salable, but Chinese peanuts in the shell do not possess the attractive appearance of the bleached Japanese nuts. They are known as "naturals" on the Pacific coast.

PRINCIPAL AREAS OF PRODUCTION IN CHINA

The Province of Shantung, which has a soil particularly adapted to the growing of peanuts, is the leading peanut-producing region in China, and the Provinces of Honan and Chihli are said to rank next in importance. Some of the southern provinces also produce a considerable volume; in fact, the growing of peanuts is scattered over almost all of China. The peanuts grown in the Luanchou district, near the Luan River, are said to be superior in quality to any grown elsewhere in the Far East. The chief export towns in China are Tsingtau and Tientsin.

As China maintains no census, exact statistics of production in that country can not be given. It has been estimated by the assistant trade commissioner at Shanghai, however, that about 900,000 tons (1,800,000,000 pounds) are produced in the entire country, of which about one-third is available for export. Both peanuts and peanut oil are said to be staple articles of diet among the Chinese, and over extensive areas practically every farmer raises peanuts on a small scale.

HARVESTING AND GRADING METHODS IN CHINA

The soil in which peanuts are planted in China is generally sandy, and the first step in harvesting is pulling up the vines by hand. Then the whole field is shoveled over and the dirt screened in a kind of rocking cradle screen to get out every pod remaining in the ground. This operation is shown in Figure 40. The vines are not cured, as in this country, but the pods are removed at once and shelled, usually by hand.

The grading of peanuts in China is a hand-picking operation, or a combination of hand-screening and hand-picking. Small hand screens are suspended from the rafters of the picking house by a rope and are operated by coolies, who give the screens a shaking motion.

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