DAVID JORDAN / RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
I talked with a grower who plans to plant peanuts behind soybeans at some point in the future. With high prices for corn inputs, this grower will replace corn in 2026 with soybeans and will need to follow the soybeans with peanuts in 2027 to maintain similar acres and production of peanuts. The corn is simply not penciling out. The question was what impact this will have on peanuts (soybeans then peanuts after an historical corn-corn-peanut rotation)? My answer was a 5% reduction. I was driving to the PVQE meeting in Suffolk and trying to remember some of the things we have learned from our rotation trials. Turns out that we did not have that rotation sequence in place, but I did find one that was close. Before I describe this data, I have heard a couple of farmers say that some of their peanuts yielded better the first year after soybeans. The farmer I was talking to had heard this too. However, I do think this conclusion is likely based on comparing one year to the next year or one field to another field at the farm level. I certainly don’t disagree with what a farmer might have observed, but I’m not sure the same conclusion would be drawn if the peanuts were planted in the same field in the same year following a “good rotation” versus a rotation that had soybeans the year prior to peanuts.
In one trial, we had:
- Cotton-Soybeans-Cotton-Cotton-Cotton-Peanuts (5430 lbs/acre)
- Cotton-Cotton-Cotton-Cotton-Cotton-Peanuts (5730 lbs/acre)
In this case, the previous year with soybeans resulted in peanut yields that were 5% lower.
In a second trial, we had:
- Corn-Peanut-Corn-Corn-Peanut (5700 lbs/acre)
- Peanut-Corn-Peanut-Corn-Peanut (4630 lbs/acre)
- Corn-Peanut-Soybean-Corn-Peanut (5210 lbs/acre)
Peanut yield in rotation 2 is 19% lower than yield in rotation 1.
Peanut yield is rotation 3 is 9% lower than yield in rotation 1.
I suspect a rotation of Peanut-Corn-Soybean-Peanut (discussed by the grower) would be somewhere between 9 and 19%, considerably higher than my 5% estimate.
But, as we know, the financial constraints and marketing opportunities dictate crop sequences more than the biology of the rotation. This makes perfect sense. I had a somewhat similar question from a farmer going into 2025, but the context was different. In that case, the farmer was looking at planting more peanuts because the price for peanuts was more reasonable. The farmer was shortening a very good rotation down to just two years of a good rotation crop. The real question was whether fumigation could make up the difference in reducing the rotation sequence. My answer was that it would help some, but in the long run, the less-than-ideal rotation, even for a short period, will eventually manifest itself in some negative way. But we have to get through the short term to even have to chance to address the long term ramifications.
Challenging times right now! ∆
DAVID JORDAN / NORTH CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
Link To Original Story: https://peanut.ces.ncsu.edu/news/peanuts-following-soybeans-peanut-notes-no-31-2026/
