Sustainability: A ‘Good News’ Story To Tell

“If you can take some defoliation, we have data that shows top yields can still be achieved,” he says. However, if a producer is trying to stretch a 14-day interval out, and then it rains, and the interval becomes much longer, that’s when leaf spot takes hold.

“It’s all about what you are comfortable with as a producer,” Kemerait says. “Not every field will work with extended interval applications. These days you also need to consider that fungicide applications do not stop at 120 days.

“A perfect storm situation is uncooperative weather, short rotations, overreliance on the same class of fungicides and stretching the intervals of fungicide programs,” he says. “We can manage all of that by being careful with what we do.”

Overreliance On SDHIs

Kemerait says producers have an expanding arsenal of fungicides; however, with all these new fungicides, there are not any new classes of chemistry.

“Whether it’s Excalia, Provysol, Sipcam — yes, there are different chemistries, but they are all the same class — the succinate-dehydrogenase-inhibitors, or SDHI class, as they are most often called.

“We are becoming increasingly familiar with and reliant on these fungicides,” he says. “And I’ll even use the term ‘overreliant’ because I think if you take shorter rotations and weather, and you rely on a single class of chemistry to carry the lot, bad things can happen. In 2021, with the rain, we saw a lot of leaf spot.”

Kemerait says no matter the cost, fungicides are needed to fight disease, but be careful to not rely too heavily on the SDHIs. “If you don’t incorporate other chemistries, resistance will develop.”

The addition of sulfur as a tank-mix partner can help with leaf spot control. However, Kemerait says certain sulfur products should be used.

“Products that offer additional leaf spot protection include Microthiol 80W, Drexel Sulfur 80W, Drexel Suffa 6F,

White Mold Still Garners Attention

Although leaf spot is the disease causing more problems in producers’ fields, some years ago it was white mold. Tim Brenneman, UGA peanut research pathologist says they are looking at some shifts in sensitivity of white mold pathogen to some of the chemistries we use.

“We have looked at several hundred isolates and we are seeing changes in sensitivity,” Brenneman says. “Looking at our database from 20 years ago, we’re seeing that those isolates are not as sensitive to some of our main fungicides like flutolonil and tebuconozole.

“We want to see how that affects control in the field and response to some of the newer fungicides like Elatus or Excalia that are in the same class of chemistry,” he says. “Does less resistance to older chemistries translate into less control in some of the newer ones? That is what we are looking at.” PG

Battling Disease In 2022:

• Anticipate problems based on history and weather conditions. • Use Peanut Rx to determine risk level of fields. • Have a contingency plan if a first fungicide choice is not available. • Make sure you have disease protection on the seed and in the furrow. • Add an in-furrow nematicide or plant a resistant variety. • Be as ‘on time’ as possible with leaf spot protection. • Do not rely too heavily on SDHI products. • Tank-mix sulfur to increase leaf spot control.

The Sustainable U.S. Peanut Initiative provides a toolkit to communicate with consumers who are increasingly making choices based on environmental impact.

By Amanda Huber

The peanut industry abounds with data. The Peanut Genomic Initiative mapped the genetic makeup of the peanut, and now breeding is possible using marker-assisted selection. Production research helps increase yield and fight pests. Nutrition studies show the healthy aspects of this beloved legume. New information shows peanuts need less water to produce more crop. The industry runs on numbers, but there is a data set that is lacking. It is needed documentation and something customers are increasingly asking for. Where does the peanut industry stand on sustainability?

With its reach across all segments of the industry – growers, shellers, manufacturers and allied businesses – the American Peanut Council is the natural choice to lead this effort. Months ago, APC leaders, in collaboration with stakeholders from across the peanut industry, laid out a plan to collect the needed data. They received input from the National Peanut Research Lab and other industry data sources on the framework and potential questions. With cotton as the natural rotation partner, they worked with the cotton industry’s Cotton Trust Protocol to develop a platform. They hired Eric Coronel as the trade association’s first-ever sustainability director.

Tell Your Sustainability Story

All elements in place, the APC unveiled the Sustainable U.S. Peanuts Initiative to begin enrolling peanut growers in this effort in late January.

“You are the ones who need to tell your story; therefore, we need your participation,” says Coronel, who, prior to his work with APC, was a senior research analyst with Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture and oversaw the collection and analysis of year-to-year progress of 11 U.S. crops against indicators of environmental sustainability. “The initiative is voluntary, but we hope to talk with growers and discuss what can be learned from it.”

APC President and CEO Richard Owen, says, “This is an opportunity for growers to document themselves within a systemized and tested platform the practices they are doing on their farm. The data will be aggregated together to tell what’s happening more broadly across the industry, and just as important, to provide back to growers documentation on what is happening on their farm in relation to farming practices in the region and nationwide.”

“Having this data is important to be able to chart the sustainability path for peanuts. There is a good story to tell,” Coronel says.

Benefit To Growers And Consumers

The Sustainable U.S. Peanuts Initiative has two purposes; the first is customer facing. “All the data will be aggregated for industry use in creating their messaging to customers,” Coronel says. “The industry will be able to use it for domestic and export marketing.

“The other is more private facing, and it is to be able to help

Why Does The Industry Need The Sustainability Initiative?

• Peanuts have a great sustainability story. • Increasing demand for transparency from consumers. • Working with cotton platform increases input efficiency. • Acting now will allow the peanut industry to control our journey. • Manufacturers gain tools to help with consumer messages and marketing. • Producers can compare their farm assessment to regional and national benchmarks to evaluate performance and find ways to maximize productivity. • Insights will be shared in aggregate form, such as the average greenhouse gas emissions are 0.7 pounds of CO2e per pound of peanuts.

For more information or to register, go to sustainableuspeanuts.org.

In Terms Of Peanut Production, The Initiative Is:

• A framework to capture the environmental footprint at the farm level • A program to increase the transparency through second and third-party verifications • A grower platform to learn from each other through benchmarks at the state and national level • A framework to communicate the aggregate footprint to the supply chain • A program to work towards continuous improvement by identifying where efficiencies can be found • A program to highlight successes and celebrate the work peanut farmers do • A program to provide messaging about peanut sustainability beyond just the data from the growers participating in the platform

The Initiative Is Not A Program:

• To tell farmers how to grow peanuts • To penalize growers for how they grow peanuts • To restrict inputs • To compare states or regions against each other • To provide guaranteed markets to growers growers,” he says. “A grower who participates will get information back about their farm compared to the region’s benchmarks and metrics and be able to make management decisions based on that. In terms of data, it will always be shared in aggregate, not on an individual level. The grower owns their individual data.”

Owen says, “Our customers, especially, are asking for more and more transparency. That is not going to go away.

“The more we can document and share what’s being done currently and what’s being put into place for the future is going to be important. It’s hard to recover if a story is told incorrectly or it’s not the whole story.”

Working With Cotton

In the summer of 2020, the cotton industry’s U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol opened to prove, measure and verify U.S. cotton’s sustainability credentials. The goal is to give brands and retailers the critical assurances needed that the cotton fiber element of their supply chain is more sustainably grown with lower environmental and social risk. The system lets U.S. growers document and highlight their land management and environmental stewardship practices while helping them achieve continuous improvement in six sustainability metrics: land use, soil carbon, water management, soil loss, greenhouse gas emissions and energy efficiency.

For each peanut field entered into the platform, farmers will receive eight sustainability metric scores, seven if non-irrigated, along with state and national benchmarks as available. ▶

The APC worked with the cotton industry to create a grower platform based on the Cotton Trust Protocol template.

“We are working to make data collection easy and efficient,” Coronel says. “At the end of the day, you will not have to provide us as much data as we would need if we were not working with the cotton industry.”

Both grower platforms aim to bring quantifiable and verifiable goals and measurements to sustainable cotton and peanut production in order to drive continuous improvement in key sustainability metrics.

It’s About Trust And Comfort

Starting now is a great opportunity to be proactive in creating our own program before buyers or external markets try to impose a sustainability program on the American peanut industry, Coronel says. “Consumers are demanding transparency because they want to be able to trust products they eat or use. We believe this initiative will help the industry move in that direction.”

In the end, the peanut industry will have a great story of sustainability with formalized data to take to buyers and markets.

Owen says, “The goal is not to communicate directly to consumers, but to provide manufacturers with a toolkit to communicate with their consumers all the good things about peanuts.”

“Acting now allows us to control the path taken,” Coronel says. “Our customers want to be able to feel comfortable eating our product. We also must consider that farmers need to make a living. Farmers will learn from this program, and consumers will be able to see the footprint of peanuts and know that they can trust this product.” PG

According to the Field To Market 2021 National Indicators Report, U.S. peanut production’s environmental footprint has improved every decade for the past 40 years, with the greatest in greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and land use. ▶