Available Time to Plant and Harvest Peanuts

Peanut farmers’ acreage allocation and equipment management decisions remain heavily dependent upon weather uncertainty. The number of days suitable for fieldwork (DSFW) were evaluated during key production times for 11 peanut-producing states. The objectives of this analysis were to define most active dates for peanut planting and harvest field activities, to estimate DSFW occurring within the most active date ranges for each peanut producing state, and to analyze these DSFW data for trends over time. Crop progress data reflects when producers are most likely to engage in field work not necessarily the most agronomically advantageous time. Weekly USDA NASS data from 1995 to 2018 for planting and from 1995 to 2017 for harvest were analyzed to develop a probability distribution. Comparing the middle of the distribution, the 50th percentile, shows that North Carolina had the fewest days available for planting (16.4 days) while Arkansas has the most days for planting (34.0 days). Georgia, for comparison, had 23.0 days for planting. For harvest at the 50th percentile, Arkansas has one of the fewest days available for harvest (23.0 days) and South Carolina has the most available (40.0 days). Georgia had 34.0 days available for harvest. These results are useful for farmers, practitioners, and researchers for decision making including determining the number of acres that can be planted and/or harvested in a given year based on weather risk. Sizing equipment to complete field work only for the maximum DSFW leaves no contingency for poor field conditions or equipment failure. These results are important for farm decision makers to make machinery selection and acreage allocation decisions. As an added benefit of this paper, the R programming code used to access and develop graphs have been made available for readers to use in their own research.