After finishing up lunch at UGA’s Southeast Research and Education Center, tour participants continued their trek to the land of onions. Wait a minute. This is supposed to be the Peanut Tour. What are we doing visiting an onion area? Well, since Georgia is known for its sweet onion, the Vidalia Onion, it is only fitting to learn a little about Georgia’s famous tear-jerker while in this part of the state.

Tour attendees arrived at Vidalia Valley in Lyons, Georgia. Vidalia Valley is owned by the Stanley family, which is a 6^th generation family of Georgia farmers. Brian, R.T. Jr., Tracy and Vince are the current generation to grow the business from a local, seasonal farm to a year-round, multi-location and multi-functional group of integrated businesses. They not only grow the country’s famous Vidalia Onions, they farm over 4,000 acres of other vegetables and row crops. Vidalia Valley, the processing facility, bottles thousands of cases and millions of pounds of peeled and diced onions including reds, whites and yellows, each year. Vidalia Onion Farms, IQF facility, freezes millions of pounds of diced onions, carrots and sweet potatoes each year. Vidalia’s Best, the fresh produce facility, grows and distributes fresh cucumbers, melons and sweet potatoes. When it comes to fresh and processed produce, the Stanley’s and their integrated business are your East coast source for ‘Farm Direct Made Easy.’

During the tour of Vidalia Valley, tour participants were given a tour of the facility. At this particular facility, onions grown by Stanley Farms, as well as outsourced onions are shipped in, peeled and sent into manufacturing or further processing. During Vidalia Onion season, which runs from April to August, representatives from Vidalia Valley said they ship out 40,000 pounds a day of whole, peeled onions. Through Vidalia Valley’s processing facility, products such as relishes, salsas, dressings, vinaigrettes, jams, jellies, specialty items, barbeque and hot sauce, as well as organic products are created. Many of the products can be found on Vidalia Valley’s website, vidaliavalley.com, and some are created for other restaurants and retailers. Vidalia Valley even develops peanut related products for consumers, such as a Thai peanut sauce and a peanut butter barbecue sauce for Paula Dean. Click here for one of Paula’s recipes using the peanut butter barbecue sauce!

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Bob Kemerait, Georgia Peanut Tour chairman and University of Georgia Extension Plant Pathologist, reviewed some of the new products available for growers in 2015. His main focus is helping to train county agents and work with the growers in terms of management and reducing the impact of diseases in their fields. He is also given the opportunity to conduct research on new products for the management of leafspot, white mold and other soilborne diseases in peanuts.

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Attendees also learned about peanut diseases from Dr. Tim Brenneman, University of Georgia research and Extension plant pathologist. His main research on peanuts revolves around soil borne diseases including white mold, Rhizoctonia, Cylindrocladium black rot. He also works on nematodes and nematode management. He works on a very active program developing fungicides and overall management programs for farmers. According to Brenneman, the 2014, crop has not been severe for disease issues so far. Early on we had a few issues with seedling disease, Aspergillus Crown rot and getting good stands established. That was early in the year so most farmers were able to get a reasonable stand. “Recently, we have had a lot of underground white mold and I think we are in the initial stages on seeing how that will develop,” Brenneman says. “I think there is a lot we will learn as peanuts are being dug.”

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While at the Southeast Georgia Research and Education Center, Glen Harris University of Georgia Extension soils and fertilizer specialist visited with attendees about calcium nutrition for peanuts. For the last three or four years we’ve really focused on calcium nutrition on peanuts, Harris says. The focus started when the industry shifted from small seeded to large seeded peanut varieties. Harris has been comparing the varieties and the calcium requirements needed. According to Harris, he found out that growers can maintain using the University of Georgia old recommendations on the new larger seeded peanut varieties.

Since then, Harris’ research has shifted more into looking at ways of providing calcium to the pegging zone of peanuts which is really important for the yields. He is also looking at different gypsums, calcium chloride and lime through the pivot. Although, the old standard Extension recommendation is if you need calcium then apply 1,000 pounds of gypsum at bloom time is still the standard today for growers.

The 2014 peanut crop of irrigated peanuts look good but the dryland peanuts have suffered a little. As far as nutrients, Harris says, he hasn’t noticed any major nutrient problems. However, he is a little concerned with the calcium nutrition in dryland because you need the water to get the calcium into the nut so you don’t get pops. “So, we might find that we have a little lower yields and pops, due not only to the drought, but maybe even due to some calcium issues,” Harris says. He says there’s not a whole lot growers can do about that, if you do everything you can and still get dry weather. But overall, the 2014 crop, nutritionally, is looking very good, he adds.

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Mark Abney, peanut entomologist at UGA, visited with Georgia Peanut Tour attendees during the three-day tour on the various pest issues and the research he has been working on the last two years.

“Some of the things that are really exciting to me in terms of entomology research are the economic thresholds we are developing for a lot of the pests we have in peanuts,” Abney says. “That’s very important to growers so they know when to spray or not to spray so that we are not wasting money by not treating when we need to or by over treating when we don’t need to be spraying.”

Abney also has an efficacy testing program where he looks at all of the new chemistries and some of the older chemistries on the established pests we have to determine what is the best product to use for the pests we have in peanuts.

According to Abney, 2014 has been a very buggy year. He says the year started out early with thrips, very much like in 2013. Then growers went straight from that to some caterpillar problems that have been higher than a normal year.

The two things that have been really problematic for growers this year have been lesser cornstalk borer and two spotted spider mite. “Those are probably the two most important pests we have had in Georgia. They are not a pest every year but when they are it can be really problematic,” Abney says.
“We have spent a lot of money and heartache trying to control those two pests.” Both pests are very difficult to control especially in non-irrigated fields with the hot and dry conditions we have seen in 2014, he adds.

Abney credits the Georgia Peanut Commission for the research funding he receives and says it is extremely important for what he does at UGA. Without the funding, it would have been very difficult if not impossible to get his research program started. “We wrote a grant last year and received some money from the Georgia Peanut Commission which we were able to use to leverage with USDA to receive a larger grant from USDA this year,” Abney says. “This allows us to work on some of the thresholds for the key pests we have and without the Georgia Peanut Commission support we would not be able to do the research.”

Abney also has a blog where he provides growers the latest information on peanut pest issues at http://blog.extension.uga.edu/peanutent.

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During the visit at the Southeast Georgia Research and Education Center Scott Tubbs, University of Georgia cropping systems agronomist, explained his research focus and provided an update on the 2014 Georgia Peanut Crop. The primary focus of his research program is to look at different aspects of peanut agronomics such as tillage, cover crop effects prior to the peanut crop, row patterns, seeding rates, plant populations, different planting date affects such as replanting and many other agronomics that effect various aspects of disease, entomology and weed science.

“Some of the primary issues of the 2014 peanut crop are mainly related to moisture and rainfall,” Tubbs says. “On the non-irrigated peanut crop we ended up with a lot of dryland peanuts that have not fully developed and are behind on maturity.” The yield looks like it will be suppressed. There was poor flowering and poor pod set on that crop early on when the rainfall stopped and we ended up with very dry conditions for the months of July and August. So those conditions are starting to become rectified with recent rainfall. However, we are getting to the point in the season where it is going to be difficult to make up the time we have lost for getting a good pod set and good yields on the dryland crop.

Some of the research funding from the Georgia Peanut Commission and the National Peanut Board are projects where I have looked at seeding rates and various replant decisions for peanuts. The trials are included in multiple locations throughout the state and at the Southeast Research and Education Center in Midville, Georgia. In these trials Tubbs looks at how important is it to get an established plant stand on the first planting. “If you can’t get a good established plant stand on the initial planting the amount of money it costs to go back into a field is costly to a grower,” he says. The additional costs include the cost of more passes through the field, additional cost of more seed and then also determining when is the appropriate time to dig based on maturity. With two different planting dates growing in the same field at the same it is very difficult to determine the optimum maturity. Because some peanuts will be over mature while others are immature.

A lot of information from the UGA Peanut Team is available online at ugapeanuts.com.

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Following the visit to Joe Boddiford’s farm in Screven County, Georgia, tour attendees headed to the University of Georgia Southeast Research and Education Center in Burke County, Georgia. At the research centers many of the members of the UGA Peanut Team provided information on research they conduct at the center involving pest management to disease control. Also, attendees learned more about how farmers tell when their peanuts are ready for harvest from local county Extension agents.

Cotton, corn and peanuts are the major crops produced in Burke County with a peanut crop production estimated to reach roughly 38,250-39,000 tons. Burke County planted between 16,000 and 18,000 acres of peanuts this growing season.  “Thrips, spider mites, foliage feeding pest, nematodes, white mold and lack of rain were some troubles farmers faced this season,” says Peyton Sapp,  Burke County extension coordinator.

Sapp also presented a peanut maturity demonstration to tour attendees.

View the 2014 Georgia Peanut Photo Album.

Joe Boddiford, Screven County peanut farmer, and Ray Hicks, Screven County Extension agent.

Joe Boddiford of Screven County, Georgia, visited with attendees during the first tour stop Thursday morning, Sept. 18, 2014. Boddiford has been farming since 1974 and follows in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Joe took time to introduce his brother and cousin to tour attendees. “We have all been involved in agriculture our whole lives and we love it,” he says. He also introduced his son, Knapp Boddiford, and told a story about how Knapp got his name. His name comes from Seamen Knapp who actually drafted a bill for the establishment of experimental research stations, which later was introduced to the 47th Congress, laying the foundation for a nationwide network of agricultural experiment stations.

Use of technology on the farm was the main focus of this tour stop at Boddiford’s farm. Boddiford pointed to a 1962 John Deere 3010 tractor that Boddiford started farming with in 1974. His father originally purchased the tractor in 1962. Boddiford farmed with the 3010 for a number of years and needed a new tractor in the 1990s so he sold it but later regretted it. After many years, Boddiford saw a John Deere 3010 tractor at an auction in South Carolina, recognized it as the tractor he had sold earlier so he purchased it again from the auction for more money than he originally sold it for. Today, Boddiford has told his son that the 3010 tractor is one piece of equipment he can’t sell.

When comparing the 3010 tractor to other equipment sitting beside it tour attendees can quickly notice how times and technology has changed throughout the years. Boddiford first became involved with the latest technology when he attended a precision ag conference in 1996 and has since worked with the Extension service on several research projects using auto steer, yield monitoring and more. Boddiford also uses swath control on his sprayers which helps prevent spray overlap.

In addition to learning about Joe Boddiford’s farm, attendees were able to hear from researchers at Clemson University on the work they are doing with variable depth digging and peanut yield monitoring.
Click here to view their presentation.

The visit would not have been complete without an example of peanut digging in the field. Of course this two-row digger shown in the video has been retrofitted to look at variable depth digging in the research trial.

Each year the Georgia Peanut Tour Committee strives to showcase the southern hospitality of the state. One easy way to do that is location and food. This year had an array of both from visiting the first city in Georgia to a range of southern food including fried chicken, barbecue, ribs, peach cobbler, banana pudding and more. Savannah is known for it’s large oak trees towering over parks and roads throughout town. If those trees could talk they’d tell you about pirates, cotton, and a revolutionary town plan dating to 1733. They’d tell you about a citizenry that treats hospitality as an art form, of a St. Patrick’s Day celebration that defies description, and of a city’s beauty so profound that it stopped even General William Tecumseh Sherman in his tracks. Today, many things happening in the Savannah area are transforming the city into one of the most dynamic and creative economies in the southeast. Savannah has tons of history and jaw-dropping container ships traveling the waterfront of River St.

If you are ever in Savannah walking around River St. then you should stop by The Peanut Shop for samples of everything peanut. There is roasted peanuts, peanut brittle and peanut butter. However, the hundreds of cans of roasted peanuts are not your traditional salted peanuts. No, these cans are everything from Savory Dill Pickle, Bloody Mary, Sea salt and Cracked Pepper, Thai Fried Chili Lime, Spicy Mole, Salt and Vinegar, Spicy Smoky Redskin, Hot Habanero Chile Pepper, Bacon and Cheddar and more. The best part is free samples. If you are a peanut lover then be sure to visit The Peanut Shop the next time you are in Savannah.

Following the tour of the Port of Savannah, tour attendees had a couple of hours to visit River Street before setting sail on the Savannah Riverboat Cruise. The two-hour cruise gave attendees an opportunity to see the city from a different view while enjoying good food and entertainment. If you are ever in the Savannah area then check out the riverboat cruise for a fun and relaxing time.

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The Port of Savannah is a major U. S. seaport located at Savannah, Georgia and also known as the Garden City Terminal. Its extensive facilities for oceangoing vessels line both sides of the Savannah River approximately 18 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Operated by the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA), the Port of Savannah competes primarily with the Port of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina to the northeast, and the Port of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida to the south. The GPA operates one other Atlantic seaport in Georgia, the Port of Brunswick, located at Brunswick, Georgia, as well as two interior ports linked to the Gulf of Mexico, Port Bainbridge and Port Columbus.

Owned and operated by the Georgia Ports Authority, the Garden City Terminal is the fourth-busiest container port in the United States and provides access to 44 percent of U.S. consumers in 2-3 days. At 1,200 acres, it’s North America’s busiest single-terminal container facility. This allows for maximum efficiency and flexibility, concentrating all manpower, technology and equipment in one massive container operation.

The terminal includes two Class I railroads on-site that provides freight by train to boat without weight restrictions. Other ports without a rail system have weight restrictions when moving containers via truck. The rail system helps with moving 2,000 lbs. a thousand miles on a single gallon of fuel. The port also sees approximately 8,000 trucks in and out through the day.

The port has also invested in more than 2,800 refrigerated container spaces, with more on the way. The refrigerated space allows another known Georgia product, poultry, to be exported through Savannah. In fact, the Port of Savannah exports so much poultry that if Georgia was a country then the state would be the fourth largest poultry exporter in the world.

Here’s a quick video clip of cargo being unloaded from a container ship at the Port of Savannah.

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