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John Reddecop named Southwest peanut winner

John Reddecop is the 2023 Peanut Efficiency Award winner for the Southwest. He credits resting his land, field trials and family as essential aspects of his sustainable peanut production.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

July 5, 2023

18 Slides
Reddecop family peanut planting
John Reddecop family, from left, John with wife Lena and their daughters Mia and Gracie.Shelley E. Huguley

John Reddecop is the Southwest's 2023 Peanut Efficiency Award winner. He grows organic and conventional peanuts in Yoakum County, Texas, a region where drought is commonplace, and the wind blows often. Resting his sandy soils for at least one year and planting a rye cover are key management practices that yield big returns.

“I’ve found out my yields go through the roof leaving my land out of production at least one year,” Reddecop said. “That’s where my biggest yields come from.”

John farms with his brother Henry Reddecop. The brothers conduct their own field trials and are slowly converting suitable conventional acres to organic to increase profit potential and save water. Rye is planted on acres being converted from “old farm dirt” to organic—a process that takes three years.

For the last two years, peanut yields have exceeded 7,000 pounds – “a career best.” He and Henry hope to top that in 2023. But both admit, that's a tall order.

Take a look at this gallery to catch a glimpse of Reddecop's operation, family and planting day on the Reddecop farm.

Follow the links below to view the other PEA winners' operations:

Related:Rest and test: Key to peanut winner’s yields

Read more about:

Peanut Efficiency Award

About the Author

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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