Creamy. Crunchy. Salted. Roasted. Peanuts are used in many ways, whether
it’s as a ballpark snack or as an ingredient in the ever popular household
item, peanut butter.
Steve Price started growing peanuts four years ago, at his home in Basin City,
Wash. The reason for this endeavor was originally for bio oil, Price said.
“We used to farm a lot more ground than we do now. We used to do 2,300
acres of hay a cutting of our own and of our neighbors and my fuel supplier
was unable to supply diesel,” he said. As a result, Price had to buy
road diesel and came to the realization of how helpless one is when diesel
isn’t available.
“There was a lot of interest in bio-fuels and peanuts are 50 percent
oil…the first diesel engine was run on peanut oil,” Price said.
“I had seen them grown here before, not commercially but in gardens
and so we just thought we’d give ‘em a try.”
However, due to problems such as weeds and poor timing, Price ended up feeding
the peanuts to livestock. “So it wasn’t a total loss,” he
said.
Price continues to grow peanuts on a smaller scale, and currently has three
acres of peanuts. The type of peanut that he grows is called Valencia, which
is used for making peanut butter.
The local growing season for peanuts requires farmers to plant by May 7th
and lift the third or fourth week of September, Price said.
“Our window of growth isn’t as big as they have in the south,”
he said. “So we only have a limited amount of time to set peanuts.”
In the south, the narrowest they grow their rows is 30 inches, Price said.
He has his at 22 inch rows.
“So if we narrow the rows up we may not have as many peanuts under our
plants as they would in the south, but because we have more plants per acre,
we’re hoping to be able to equal what they do,” he said.
In the Columbia Basin, many crops are grown on 22 inch rows, such as beans.
But the manufacturers of peanut lifters make the equipment for 30 inch rows
or wider, Price said. “If you’re going to introduce a new crop,
if everybody has to go out and buy new equipment to grow this crop, it’s
not going to happen,” he said. So instead, Price uses a picket bean
cutter to lift the peanuts and he also uses a peanut combine to harvest. For
wider rows, farmers use what is called a Digger Shaker Inverter.
Price works with Dr. Ian Burke, assistant professor in the crop and soil science
department at Washington State University in Pullman to research peanut growth
and WSU is in its third year of monitoring peanut production at Price’s
farm. WSU has been and continues to provide Price with seed and chemicals.
WSU also has research plots in Othello, Wash.
According to Tim Waters, WSU area extension educator for Franklin and Benton
counties, peanut research is being done on farms northeast of Hermiston, Ore.
“Two growers are growing Virginia type (ballpark) peanuts to assess
how well they will yield in the Hermiston area,” Waters said. “The
Hermiston area has rather sandy soil and a lot of heat units, two things that
peanuts like.”
The area also has low humidity, making the progression of foliar diseases
less likely than in areas of the United States where peanuts are traditionally
grown, he said.
“One grower is producing the crop using conventional means while the
other is producing the crop organically,” he said. “There has
been interest from a couple of processors who sell boiled peanuts and fresh
roasted peanuts that want to find a local source of fresh peanuts in which
to make their product. Locally grown and organic peanuts are highly desirable
to these vendors.”
In the United States, the peanut market is in organic. “There’s
like a 10 to 20,000 ton shortage of organic peanuts,” Price said. “If
we could grow them organically here; and we can, but we’ve got to learn
to grow them first; there’s a huge market for that.”
Peanut seed costs about $50 a bag and about $80 total including shipping.
As far as fertilizer needs for a peanut crop, Price says it’s about
the same as dried beans. “It’s a legume so it makes its own nitrogen,”
he said. Fertilizer needs also include calcium, potassium and phosphate. Price
said that they used a little bit of manure as well and avoided commercial
fertilizer. The soil needs a PH of about 7.5, Price added.
Peanuts can be grown in rotation with wheat, corn, alfalfa and beans. According
to Burke, it’s important to rotate peanuts with other crops because
of primarily disease problems that could arise.
Price has yet to sell any of his peanut crops but is planning to try this
year. He said he hopes to sell it for $1 a pound. “But we hope everybody
keeps in mind that they’re supporting research with that,” he
said. The goal is to produce 3-4,000 pounds of peanuts per acre.
Some risks involved with growing peanuts include insects, cold weather and
frost. “If you dig peanuts and they freeze, it freezes that night; then
that can damage them. But if they have a couple days to dry out, then they
can stand cold temperatures,” Price said.
As far as what kind of advice Price would give to potential peanut farmers,
first off, “Make sure your marriage is good,” he laughed.
Overall, the goal is to sell commercially, and Price plans to continue in
this endeavor until they find success. “Go till we make it work,”
he said. “Go till we find the right varieties, go till we say, hey,
this is what we can do and hopefully start getting peanuts into the market.”
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