Peanuts

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/us/in-the-south-a-good-year-for-farmers-of-peanuts.html

Who doesn’t love eating peanuts during a baseball game or at home watching a football game? Just like the notorious song lyrics written by Jack Norworth say, “take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd, buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks, I don’t care if I ever get back”. Well this year we are in luck because 6.1 billion pounds of peanuts will be harvested this year; a significant growth from last year’s 3.6 billion pounds harvested. Not only are they escalating in quantity but they are also expanding in quality. Farmers say that this year’s peanuts “taste better than average”. The state of Georgia produces over half of the United States peanuts. This year in Georgia 730,000 acres were planted as opposed to last year’s unfortunate 475,000 acres making a record for the amount of “big shell-filling kernels”. Chairman of the Georgia Peanut Commission, Armond Morris, planted over a thousand acres of peanuts in Tifton, Georgia alone. Morris says “I’ll just say that the farmers of Georgia have been blessed with weather conditions, we had rain at the right time and didn’t have but three or four days that were 95 degrees”. Although this year has encountered such great success, unfortunately peanut farmers have experienced tough challenges throughout the year: “amid worries over climate change, farm bill politics, and more recently a peanut butter recall”. This success should start to bring down the prices of peanut butter, which last year elevated up 24 cents. Mr. Griggs stated that “If peanut prices don’t come down, it won’t be the farmers’ fault, there’s some good, quality peanuts out there.” This is great news for many people considering 90 percent of houses have peanut butter, according to the market research group Mintel International. Thanks to many factors the peanut crop is experiencing great success.