Peanut planting is coming to a close and I am pretty certain we did not plant what the earlier planting intentions said. I will really be a bit surprised if we increased much at all over last year's acreage. The National Center for Peanut Competitiveness told us early on to compete fully with cotton acres we would have to have a $475 contract and contracts never really made it there except for some sweetheart deals.
With cotton seeming to remain strong and the fact that all predictions seem to say cotton will be even stronger next year it will be interesting to see where the 2011 contracts finally end up.
Since we were forced in to the marketing loan program in 2002 we have certainly ridden a roller coaster in the market place.
As far as the crop conditions we look really good at this point, maybe the best start on a crop in years. High temps this week are going to zap the dryland pretty quickly. That is not bad at this point because we have yet to stress the crop and it has been my observation the best peanut crops are stressed early and get rain during podset.
