Texas peanut producers increased their acreage last year after back-to-back years of drought, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service experts at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Vernon. That number could climb next year if losses across hurricane-ravaged regions along the East Coast drive peanut prices upward this year.
Despite early predictions for a third consecutive drought-limited crop, the state saw 236,000 acres planted to peanuts last year, up 14,000 acres from 2023, said Emi Kimura, Ph.D., AgriLife Extension state peanut specialist and associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Vernon.
Texas grows all four market types of peanuts, Kimura said. This year, the largest majority, 46%, of the acreage was planted to Spanish, followed by runner, Virginia and Valencia. That has shifted from a couple years ago when most of the peanuts were runners.
“The number of acres going to Spanish is increasing because the price is higher,” she said. “The runner peanuts are mostly for peanut butter while Spanish peanuts go into the food market.”
Texas is the second largest producer of peanuts, followed by Florida with 190,000 acres and Alabama with 170,000 acres.
In terms of production, he said U.S. peanut growers planted the highest number of acres since 2017, with an expected production of 4.1 million tons of peanuts. That would have given an expected ending stocks of 862,000 tons, compared to last year’s season-ending stocks of 740,000 tons.
