Uncertainty was the only certainty on the minds of many growers at the 2016 Alabama-Florida Peanut Trade Show in Dothan, Ala., Feb. 11, but the weather that day was finally nice enough to get some fieldwork done.

Circumstance have changed a lot in the last few years in the Wiregrass Region of Alabama, which encompasses about a dozen counties around Dothan in the southeast corner of the state, said Brandon Dillard, Alabama Cooperative Extension agent for the Wiregrass.

“In 2011, 2012 and 2013, we had good prices, and we had some good yields and good weather. Now, in the last two years we’re sitting on low yields; we haven’t had very good weather; and we're looking at bad prices,” Dillard said.

To quantify the fickle weather of the region, the area received 100 inches of rain in 2013, or nearly twice the annual average of 52 inches. For 2014, it rained well and timely early and then stopped for July, August, September and October, impacting yields and quality for peanuts and cotton. Same thing happened in 2015, except when harvest rolled around, it rained way too much. The hassles of that excessive rainfall continue today.

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Field work, Dillard said, is happening in fits and starts, running about six weeks behind through early winter, with some cover crops not being planted until well into January, all due to wet, extreme weather. As of mid-February, Dillard said, about 10 percent of the area’s 2015 cotton crop remained unharvested in fields. The growers who face that unpicked cotton along with their insurance adjusters were figuring out what to do, or what they have to do, to get last year’s crop finally put to bed.

“Really, today and tomorrow and possibly the next few days will be the only days we’ve had in a month or more to get in fields and get some work done, and that is directly due to the wet weather,” said Dillard, who had just gotten off the phone advising a grower who was about to jump on a dozer to try to fix terraces in his fields following damage from heavy rain in December. “And this is the first time he’s had the opportunity to do that.”

Alabama’s Wiregrass region is agriculturally diversified with peanut, cotton, corn, soybeans and cattle the mainstay commodities. This year, Dillard said, the crop mix for growers will reflect the best safety net options they can get from the farm bill. “Because that is really the only thing that is going to help or pay (with prices where they are now),” said Dillard, who also farms in the region.

Peanut acres in the area will be the same as last year if not a little higher, he said. Soybean acres have been on the rise in recent years and will likely go up this year, too. Cotton acreage likely will go down.

“In talking with farmers, if you have land without a generic base, I think we will see some early dry-land corn. If they can’t get the corn in on time, it will be put in soybeans. If they are irrigated, it will be beans behind corn,” he said, adding that seed companies have told growers in the region that soybean seed supply is shorter this year due to the devastating weather last fall up the Atlantic seaboard.

Seeking out the cash flow

The biggest economic concern for peanut growers in Florida now is the hefty and expected 1.38-million-ton peanut supply from the 2015 crop which will carry into the 2016 peanut marking year starting July 31, said Andy Robinson, president of the Florida Peanut Producers Association. Robinson farms 2,300 acres of peanuts with his brother, Scott, in Levy County, Fla., and co-owns the Williston Peanut shelling facility and peanut buying point.

The glut of peanuts continues to suppress the prices farmers are getting during a time when all other crop prices are drastically suppressed.

“The growers in my part of the state right now are looking to survive and not looking for a change in this carryout until we get through this farm bill,” Robinson said. “I know I ruffle feathers when I say this: But, in the years before this farm bill we have now, peanut shellers could have dropped the farmer stock price and that would decrease planting, and at $375 a ton nobody would be tearing down the gates to go plant peanuts.

"But with that generic (cotton) base and the promise of a PLC payment a year down the line, peanuts are still the best option for a lot of growers, and it will be planted. And at the end of the day, they have to look at what will cash flow for them.” 

Lenders lending understanding

Is there anything positive to point out as 2016 gets underway? Yes, Dillard said, there are some things happening in the region that are not all doom and gloom. For example, irrigation installation has boomed in the region, with some farmers increasing their irrigation installations by as much 10-fold over the last five years. The growers took the profits they earned during better pricing times several years ago and invested the earnings into the best insurance they could buy against drought: man-pumped water.

Another good thing is “the bankers and our lenders really have been willing to work with us. They know we are all in this together facing these prices and market conditions. It’s a team effort, and that has been a positive thing I’ve seen,” Dillard said.

That’s good to hear. In some cases, it might be like borrowing from Paul to pay Paul, but ag-based financiers need clients in business, and the clients certainly need some added understanding now.

The annual peanut trade show is organized by the Alabama Peanut Producers Association and the Florida Peanut Producers Association.