They don’t want to say “we don’t know,” but they don’t know.
At least they have a working hypothesis about the collapse of the 2017 peanut crop in much of Florida: it has to do with
variations in rainfall.
Bob Kemerait, Southeast Farm Press, 22 January 2018,
Peanut collapse: Something happened but it’s not clear exactly why,
…For months, University of Florida’s Institute of Food and
Agricultural Sciences Extension agents led by Anthony Drew, Mace
Bauer and Dee Broughton had been sounding the alarm that an
unprecedented collapse of the peanut crop was occurring across large
areas of Florida’s production region. Symptoms of this collapse
included stunted plants, late-season yellowing and leaves with
distinctive marginal leaf necrosis. Where most severe, entire fields
wilted in the weeks prior to harvest. Abysmal yields, off by as much
as 45 percent, forced some to consider their future in farming if
solution could not be found.
During the latter third of the season, Continue reading →