The last few weeks’ persistent rains are causing headaches for Georgia peanut farmers.
To be clear, farmers want rain. But too much rain can keep crops like peanuts from putting down the right kinds of root systems. That can mean problems down the road if soil moisture gets scarce.
Rainy, cloudy conditions can also stall plant growth and even keep some farmers from getting their peanuts in the ground.
“With the wet, saturated soils, we can’t get in and do any tillage work, can’t get in with any kind of tractor to plant, to do anything that we need to right now,” said Scott Monfort, a peanut agronomist with the University of Georgia.
Monfort says about 70 percent of Georgia’s peanut crop is already in the ground across the state. He says peanut farmers who haven’t planted face some tough choices.
They can wait for drier conditions to get crops in the ground, but that means risking a shorter growing season.
Monfort say farmers who plant peanuts now wouldn’t be able to harvest them until the start of November, and there’s no guarantee of good growing conditions that late into the year.
Another option is planting cotton in the land set aside for peanuts. Monfort says early June is late in the year for cotton, but higher prices could make that a better investment than peanuts.
But first, farmers need to wait for their fields to dry, and there’s no guarantee of that happening anytime soon.
Rainy conditions can bring more rainy conditions, says Pam Knox, with the Georgia Weather Network.
“Now that we have all this moisture available, it’s not going to take a lot of solar energy to really pop up more daily storms, and that’s going to bring in more rain,” she said.
