While harvesting has just begun, Wiregrass farmers say this year’s yield will likely end up disappointing.
While some recent rainfall has helped, ultimately most won’t be able to overcome the lack of rain earlier in the summer.
In fact, this week the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated 11 Alabama counties as natural disaster areas due to the drought, including Barbour, Coffee, Dale, Geneva, Henry and Houston counties.
“The lack of rain in June and July, especially in June, when we didn’t get a good stand of peanuts, affected our yields,” said Andy Sumblin, who operates Sumblin Farm in Kinston. “I think we had seven weeks without any rain that affected our seed population, how many peanuts per acre we got. That’s going to affect our yields in the end.”
Still, it’s too early to tell.
“The peanut harvest is just getting under way,” Sumblin said. “I think the earlier-planted peanuts will have a decent yield, but the jury’s still out on the later-planted ones. The rain this weekend definitely helped on those peanuts that were planted last in May.”
William Birdsong, an agronomist for the Wiregrass Research and Extension Center in Headland, said the yields could vary wildly from farm to farm.
“No doubt, it’s a mixed bag as far as the overall outcome,” he said. “Some areas received more rainfall during the planting process, so they had a better plant emergence, and some areas received more rain during the growing season than others. Some areas in the Wiregrass (have) been disastrous, (are) gonna be disastrous, and other areas have been very fortunate and blessed. From an overall perspective, I would say the peanut crop would be less than we desired and hoped for at the beginning of the season.”
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