With the peanut harvest of 2012 underway, Delta farmers are approaching the largely new crop with a bit of uncertainty.
“It’s just different. Really different. I don’t know if I’m going to raise them again or not,” said farmer Rick Belk.
Last week, Belk, 51, in the fields near Glendora, preparing to dig up a portion of his 320 acres of peanuts.
Unlike other Delta crops, peanut harvesting requires the peanuts to be dug up and turned over using a implement known as an inverter.
The inverter “digs them out of the ground. A blade slices up under the ground, cuts right up under it and then it flips them upside down,” Belk said.
Earlier in the week, Belk was trying to get his inverter set up. “It’s a slow, slow go,” he said.
The peanuts are allowed to dry for about a week. After that, they are harvested using a peanut combine.
Belk, and other farmers, contracted a price for their peanut crop even before it was planted.
Belk said his contract with Birdsong Peanuts of Suffolk, Va., is for a fixed price of $750 per ton.
Many farmers in Leflore County have contracted with Clint Williams Co. of Madill, Okla.. for their 2012 peanut crop.
Clint Williams has a buying point in the Greenwood-Leflore Industrial Park. Belk said Birdsong’s buying point is in Aberdeen.
Belk is hoping his crop yield will be slightly larger than what he originally contracted for.
Still, peanuts are different from other row crops, Belk said.
“So far, I don’t have the patience to go peanuts. Everything happens too slow. We’re used to being able to cut a bunch in a day. With a combine, we’ll knock out 400 to 500 acres in a day. Here, we’re going to do 50 acres a day with two combines,” he said.
This is Belk’s first season with a peanut combine.
Farmer Justin Jefcoat said he and fellow farmers Walter Makamson and Haley Easley, decided to go into peanuts together, each farming 180 acres and sharing the equipment cost.
Jefcoat, 37, said they began combining peanuts two weeks ago and have already sent some to the Clint Williams buying point located in Clarksdale.
“The Clarksdale facility is running. They’re saying the Greenwood facility will probably be open next week,” Jefcoat said.
He said the Delta’s clay-type soils sticks to the peanuts and will require cleaning before further processing can take place.
While Jefcoat said he’s gotten some grade sheets back from Clint Williams, which described the quality and yield of his peanuts, it is still “too early to tell. There’s not enough information,” he said.
A fair degree of uncertainty is also out there concerning future peanut contracts.
In 2011, when there was a nationwide shortage of peanuts, companies like Williams and Birdsong went out from their primary peanut growing regions in Georgia and Alabama, which were hit hard by a drought, Jefcoat said.
Unlike a year ago, the 2012 U.S. peanut crop has been plentiful, which will drive prices downward.
Jerry Singleton, an agent with the Leflore County Extension Service, said 2011 contracts were above average. How much they’ll be down amidst a harvest of plenty, he couldn’t say.
Looking toward next year, Jefcoat said, there will be things to seriously consider.
“I don’t think the price will be as attractive. It all depends on the harvest,” he said.
“We can be profitable. There are just a lot of unknowns.”
Meanwhile the slow peanut harvest continues.
Jefcoat said it will probably last another three to four weeks.
For Belk, growing peanuts is a slow process. Perhaps too slow.
“It’s a whole other mindset. My mindset is, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry,’” he said.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden@gwcommonwealth.com.
