Has climate change impacted the peanut growing season in Georgia?

Unpredictable and extreme temperatures associated with climate change can have a negative impact on the peanut growing season in Georgia, say experts.

“Georgia is the number one state in the U.S. for growing peanuts,” said Scott Monfort, peanut agronomist with the crop and soil science department at the University of Georgia. “We grow about 50%, maybe a little bit more, of all the peanuts in the U.S. That puts us this year little over 800,000 acres.”

Montfort said peanut planting season started April 15 and concludes in June. Peanuts are harvested typically about 140 to 150 days after planting. The earliest harvest takes place in September.

“Once the peanuts start growing we like to see high temperatures in the mid 80s to low 90s during the main part of the growing season,” said Monfort. “For low temperatures during that time period, anywhere from 65 to 75 degrees at night.”

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Monfort said over the last several years weather events tend to be a bit more extreme.

“If we start to see a lot of days with temperatures over 95 degrees for a long period of time, the crop starts to slow down its productivity,” said Monfort. “Last year we had a lot of weather events that impacted us throughout the growing season. We had very wet and cool conditions during our planting season. That slowed down our planting season. It slowed down our early season growth. That hurt us a little bit.”

But peanut farmers faced tough environmental extremes in the past, such as drought and hurricanes, and managed to survive, said Monfort.

Pam Knox, agricultural climatologist and director of the UGA Weather Network, said when looking at wheat, corn and peanut growing seasons, each crop grows differently.

“Most wheat is grown as a winter crop,” said Knox. “It’s planted in the fall and grows until frost and it dies and comes back in the spring. It’s harvested early as long as it’s relatively wet. So I would say for wheat, there probably hasn't been a whole lot of change (due to climate change).”

Corn has felt greater impacts from climate change.

“Corn is planted when the soil temperature is 50 degrees Fahrenheit or higher,” said Knox. “Now that's becoming a little bit earlier in the year than it used to and that would certainly be impacted by climate change. They adjusted that somewhat this year.

“Growers had to abandon planting a lot of corn because the ground was so wet that they couldn't get their equipment into the field. And that's not an impact of climate change. That’s related to El Nino.”

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Impact of El Nino on crops

“We had a really wet winter as we usually do with El Nino,” said Knox. “That means the ground is really wet. If you drive heavy equipment on it, either it just destroys the characteristics of the soil and flattens it out or the machinery just gets bogged down in the mud.”

Symptoms of climate change continue to add uncertainty when dealing with crops.

“The summer crops are just now really being planted,” said Knox. “The growing season might be starting a little bit earlier, but there's still a lot of year-to-year variability.”

This reporting content is supported by a partnership with several funders and Journalism Funding Funding Partners.

Erica Van Buren is the climate change reporter for The Augusta Chronicle, part of the USA TODAY Network. Connect with her at EVanBuren@gannett.com or on X: @EricaVanBuren32.

This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Has climate change had an impact on the peanut growing season?