After leaving the peanut field, tour attendees traveled to Sylvester, Georgia, to visit the Birdsong Peanuts shelling facility. For five generations, Birdsong Peanuts has delivered naturally nutritious peanuts to manufacturers around the corner and around the world. Birdsong buys carefully selected peanuts directly from the farmers’ fields. The peanuts are then cleaned, shelled, sized and shipped in truckload lots to manufacturers who turn them into many popular food items sold across the globe, from peanut butter to peanut candies.
Birdsong serves its customers from five shelling plants. The plants are supported by many buying points and warehouses to store 2.4 billion pounds of Farmers Stock peanuts. Their cold storage facilities keep 250 million pounds of shelled peanuts in a controlled environment for their customers.
Video and photography is not allowed inside the plant; however, here is a short video showing a glimpse inside Birdsong’s Suffolk, Virginia, location.
Simer Virk is an extension precision ag specialist at the University of Georgia Tifton campus and is a part of the UGA peanut team. He works a lot in the precision ag side where they look at a lot of different technologies in peanut production. Some of the research he conducts is looking into how growers can better utilize some of these precision ag technologies, whether it’s an auto steering GPS, which has become standard these days, but also some of the new technologies like variable rate or lime application.
Some of the newer spray technologies are making it to where farmers can apply more efficiently and effectively to increase crop productivity or field efficiency. A lot of these technologies originated out of the Midwest and a lot of times they are not tested in the peanut production side, so they look for opportunities to better fit these technologies into peanut production. They investigate how those technologies can be better utilized, whether it be droplet size control in real time or controlling the application volume better. Some additional research they do is on the emerging technologies that can help benefit peanut production. An example of that is agricultural drones used for spraying. Although there are some regulations, they can now detect variability across the field whether it is a disease or pest management. When working with new technologies, they are practicing seeing how those tools can be better utilized.
They are looking for ways to better treat the fields but also paying more attention to the areas that need more intensive management. They start early in the season are looking for ways on how to be more precise and do a better job of making applications more effective while still precisely controlling the volume or droplet size all while being timely. One example would be when it’s too wet in the field and farmers can’t go out with the ground sprayer, you can use newer technologies, like the drone sprayer which eliminates the need to be on the ground. Then you can still go out and make the application.
They are taking a deeper look at some of these newer, emerging technologies so growers can effectively integrate and adopt them. They are looking to not only make the peanut production better, but even take it to the next level.
Located in Camilla, Georgia, Hays LTI has been providing agricultural equipment for more than 50 years. A family-owned and operated business, Hays is best known for its dry fertilizer tenders and liquid tankers. Their equipment can be purchased, rented or both.
Every Hays-LTI product is hand-crafted on site in their state-of-the-art facility located in Camilla, Georgia. Their user-friendly design and attention to detail is what makes their equipment stand the test of time. From fertilizer plants to fields, their equipment moves liquid and dry fertilizer in over 42 states.
The company’s rental fleet includes more than 900 trailers that make up 40% of the company’s income. This option allows customers to have a known cost with no upkeep or repair.
The Hays Tender for dry fertilizer was developed in 2010 and has changed the market. This particular piece of equipment offers a lower trailer weight, equating to extra payload; greater slope on the hoppers for easier unload; covered hydraulic lines and hoses for protection from fertilizer; and all stainless steel augers, bearings, nuts and bolts. Hays employees can produce roughly seven tenders per week.
Hays’ current location was constructed in 2016 and contains all company operations on 60 acres. The location employs 65 people and generates better lead times, as well as the ability to grow the company’s product line and include other fertilizer hauling equipment.
Founder of Hays LTI, Mr. Ray Hays, started a sweet tradition after his retirement. When he called on customers, he wanted to take them something homemade, so Hays began baking homemade pecan pies for Mr. Hays to share. His daughter, Donna, said he never left town without an ice chest full of pecan pies. When he stopped to visit customers, he enjoyed giving out a homemade pecan pie, piece of literature, a business card and good handshake. Today in the Hays kitchen, they make about 600 pies a month to share with friends, vendors and customers. Tour attendees were able to have a slice on their visit, as well.
Donna Hays Stewart, co-owner of Hays LTI, attributes the following life lessons to what she feels help make their family business successful:
Be on time
Work hard
Do things right the first time
Take pride in what you do
Protect your name
Learn from your mistakes, try not to make them again
Show appreciation and stay humble
Believe that you can and never give up – don’t quit
Value people, all people
Build strong relationships
Treat people right
Give 110%
Love what you do and trust God
Check out this video showcasing their products from the ground up!
While at the Sunbelt Ag Expo, local county Extension agents, Sydni Ingram and Kale Cloud, presented a Harvest Maturity Clinic for tour attendees. Farmers utilize the hull scrape method or pod blasting and the Peanut Profile Board to determine if peanuts have reached optimum maturity for harvest. Digging peanuts is one of the biggest decisions farmers make each year. The maturity of a peanut affects the yield, flavor, grade and shelf life. Farmers can lose as much as 500 to 700 pounds per acre in fields if peanuts are harvested too early or too late. During the tour several county agents set up stations to show attendees how to use the Peanut Profile Board.
Maule Air S.T.O.L. is an aircraft manufacturer located in Moultrie, Georgia. Maule Air Inc. is owned and operated by the Maule family. Some of the Maule family, Brent Maule and his nephew Tyler Wilkes, presented their purpose and two of their planes to 2022 Georgia Peanut Tour attendees. Brent and Tyler are fourth and fifth generation aircraft manufacturers for Maule Air Inc. Maule Air Inc. take pride in the fact that their planes are take off and land within 100 feet. Their short take off and landing make them popular within the farming community. Maule also provide room in their planes to resemble the same effect of a trunk or truck bed. Along with many other implements, Maule provides tools for landing in most locations of the world. For example, they have floats for landing in water, sleds for snow, and wheels for dry land.
Attendees were able to observe the planes Brent and Tyler brought to exhibit. Brent and Tyler, also, answered questions any of the attendees had.
Chip Blalock, Executive Director of the Sunbelt Ag Expo, shared the purpose of the facility with 2022 Georgia Peanut Tour attendees. The Sunbelt Ag Expo is a trade show that focuses on agriculture at Spence Field in Moultrie, Georgia. Also known as “North America’s Premier Farm Show,” Sunbelt Ag Expo has more than 1,200 vendors and exhibitors each year. All industry members and farmers are welcomed and encouraged to attend.
The Expo sits on a 100-acre exhibit site, also neighboring a 530-acre working research farm. On this farm, Sunbelt does agronomic research on cotton, peanuts, corn, sorghum and Bermuda grass. The exhibit area includes indoor and outdoor facilities. In these facilities, visitors can observe educational, entertaining seminars and demonstrations presented by the vendors. Representatives of various companies are always available to answer questions about the equipment, supplies or chemicals they sell.
The 2022 Sunbelt Ag Expo will be on October 18-20. This year’s theme is “The New Era of Agriculture.”
Upon leaving the Georgia Department of Ag Seed Lab, the Peanut Tour caravan headed over to Kelley Manufacturing Co. in Tifton. Kelley Manufacturing Co. has been building dependable equipment for progressive farming for more than 45 years. Their Tifton site occupies 28 acres, with 193,000 square feet under roof and more than 210 employees year round.
Since 1966, Kelley Manufacturing Co. has been committed to their original philosophy of maintaining integrity, quality and craftsmanship. Their engineers are continually researching and developing fresh and innovative products to help increase the farmer’s profits and productivity.
Kelley Manufacturing’s product line is complete in that they build equipment for every phase of the farming process – from initial ground preparation through the field cleanup after harvest. Few manufacturers offer such a wide range of products to their customers. KMC employs some of the top engineers and specialists in the manufacturing process and hand-builds every component and machine sold.
During the KMC stop, peanut tour attendees were able to hear more about the history of KMC, participate in a tour of the plant showcasing how the equipment is manufactured, as well as a hands-on tour of peanut equipment!
After seeing how peanuts are harvested from the field, the Georgia Peanut Tour attendees stopped at Tifton Peanut Company to see what happens once the peanuts leave the farm. Tifton Peanut Company has six locations in Tifton and offers multiple services for the peanut farmer. They are a shelling plant, seed treatment facility, buying point and warehousing facility.
Tour attendees arrive at Tifton Peanut Company.
Peanut arrive to Tifton Peanut Company on wagons or semi-trailers.
Peanuts arrive from the farm to Tifton Peanut Company via wagons or semi-trailers. If needed, the peanuts will go through a cleaner where dirt, rocks, sticks, etc. are removed. The moisture of the peanuts is then read and if needed, the peanuts may go into a dryer if moisture is above 10.5 percent. This threshold is determined by USDA; however, Tifton Peanut Company prefers to dry their peanuts to nine percent to prevent any storage issues throughout the year. A flexible duct extending from a fan is attached to the front or back of a semi-trailer or wagon, where air that is no more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient temperature and no higher than 95 degrees Fahrenheit is pushed through the peanuts to dry them.
Peanuts are dried if needed.
The trailers the peanuts arrive on are sent to a mechanical sampler, where wagons are probed eight times and a semi-trailer is probed 15 times. In semi trailers, this equates to roughly a 150-200 lb. peanut sample. From there, a 3,600 gram sample goes into a riffle divider that divides the sample in half. One half is an official grade sample that goes into the grading room and the other as a “just in case sample” to double-check accuracies of the grading or to use in case something happens with the initial grade sample.
Peanuts are sampled for grading under this shed.
Tifton Peanut Company offers green grading, also known as high moisture grading. This allows peanuts to be graded up to 18 percent moisture, which results in a deduction in grade and value and requires the load to go back on a dryer; however, the peanuts are not required to be re-graded. Check out the video below to see how the grading process works.
For seed treatment, peanut seed is shelled and stored in 2,200 lb. totes. A 5 lb. sample is retained out of that and sent off for germination where it has to germ to at least 75 before it can be put on the market. Tifton Peanut Company does not save anything unless it’s 85 or above. Once it has a germination, they will work through Georgia Crop Improvement to get tags for that lot. Each lot is 45,000 lbs. From there, the peanut seed goes through a shaker to eliminate any splits. It then receives a fungicide treatment. There are several different types of treatment available. Tifton Peanut Company uses a polymer treatment they feel better protects the peanut and allows them to color it for identification. After being treated, the peanuts go back in the 2,000 lb. tote bags or 50 lb. bags and return to storage until farmers are ready to purchase for planting season. Planting season for peanuts begins in the April/May timeframe each year. Good quality seed is critical for peanut farmers. And a 4 oz. seed treatment can be the determining factor on whether a crop is successful.
Juliet Chu works with Dr.Peggy Ozias-Akins and Dr. Corley Holbrook on peanut genetic breeding. The research they are currently conducting is on the host resistance for white mold. White mold is a fungal pathogen that has a large economic impact on peanut production. White mold attacks the stem and laterals of the peanut plant in the area where this fungal pathogen exists. So, when the fungus attacks the plant, it causes the stem to turn brown and eventually leads to plant death. If the plant the fungal pathogen attacks in a later stage of the plant’s life, then it can also attack the pods.
So, if this fungal pathogen exists and impacts the field, it could either kill the plant or make the seeds in the pods disappear because of the fungus. It will use up all the seed and will leave growers with no yield. To solve this problem, growers can use chemical treatment, but to treat the field with chemicals, you need to do fumigation. It is very costly to do. Another way to convey this particular pathogen is to develop resistant cultivar.
So how they are doing that is by first planting Georgia-12Y, which is a resistant cultivar. Then they interspersed their breeding lines into the Georgia-12Y, and then the canopy provides moisture and humidity for the fungal development. The lines then will be inoculated with the white mold culture by Dr. Tim Brenneman and then you will see that about 40 to 50 days or 30 to 50 days after inoculation we which line is resistant and which line is not. The reason lines could be either released or used for breeding program.
Scott Tubbs is the cropping systems agronomist at the University of Georgia, located in Tifton, Georgia. He spoke to the tourists about a variety trial he is conducting at the Ponder farm, located in Tifton. The Ponder Farm trial has 10 different cultivars, nine of which are releases that have come out since Georgia-06G and Georgia-06G was set as the commercial standard for this trial. In combination with the variety trial, they also have inoculated and non-inoculated peanuts out there with Bradyrhizobia inoculant to try and help with nitrogen fixation. Each one of the varieties is represented with four replications, either inoculated or non-inoculated. Five of the varieties have come out of the University of Georgia breeding program and three of the varieties came out of the University of Florida breeding program. They also had one variety out of the USDA breeding program in Tifton, Georgia and one variety out of the USDA breeding program that is a cooperation between Auburn University and the National Peanut Research Lab in Dawson, Georgia.
In these varieties, what they often see is based on the primary breeding location. Since these breeding programs are scattered throughout the Southeastern United States and even in different states in the peanut producing areas, often they see different pest pressures. Sometimes the breeding that is done for these peanuts is surrounded by keeping different pest pressures at bay. So, tomato spotted wilt virus is a primary threat that they have been focused on in variety breeding over the last 30 years or so and many of these varieties have better tomato spotted wilt virus resistance than Georgia-06G, our current industry standard cultivar.
However, some of the varieties that have come out of the University of Florida breeding program often don’t hold up as well in this environment here in Tifton, Georgia, as they do down in the southwest corner of the state, closer to where the peanuts are bred. So, they were able to show you some varietal differences out in the field for tomato spotted wilt virus resistance and that different varieties have a different vegetative growth habit. Some have a more prominent main stem while some have more of a prostate growth habit and grow closer to the ground with a more prostrate vine habit. Some of these varieties are his agronomic research program for the first time this year. The yield on some of these varieties have performed just as well and held up just as well as Georgia-06G. He feels that they are at a point where Georgia-06G, even though it has dominated acreage for the last 12 to 15 years in the state of Georgia and in the entire southeast runner-producing area, some of these other varieties have the potential to take over some acreage from Georgia-06g because of their yield potential being just as good and having even better pest resistance to certain diseases such as the case of TifNV- High O/L, it is a root knot nematode resistant variety. They have some up and coming varieties that have very strong yield potential and may be able to take over some of the acreage.
From a buying point standpoint however, many of the buying points don’t like to handle too many varieties. It makes for a difficulty in separating, segregating and storing those peanuts when there’s too many varieties that are commercially available. So, they really try to pinpoint down to three to five cultivars that have the strongest yield potential, the strongest disease packages, and meet the needs of what growers might be facing in the majority of the fields.
