With the MLB post season in full force, game day snacks are a hot item.  One of the long standing staples of the game is a good ole bag of peanuts.

Peanuts are a major crop in the Southeast region of the United States.  Georgia, Alabama and Florida are the biggest producers at 60% production for the entire country.  Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Oklahoma are also growers.

Florida alone has over 100,000 acres planted in peanuts.

Peanuts are what you might call part of the Old South.  They originated in South America and were then transported to Africa.  They came to America as an inexpensive, high protein food and were started in commercial cultivation by farmers in the 1700s.  In 1903 George Washington Carver suggested planting them in rotation with cotton crops.

Over the years, they have been referred to as goobers, groundnuts, ground peas, earth nuts, pinder, pinda, monkey nut, and Manilla nut.  There are only four varieties grown in the US including Runners, Virginias, Valencias and Spanish.

Peanuts actually grow underground, hence the term ground nut.  After the plant flowers, the petals fall off and the “peg” turns to the ground where it penetrates and begins to grow the pod.

About 75% of peanuts grown in the US are sold domestically.  The other 25 % are exported to Canada, Japan and Western Europe.

Peanuts are a legume along with beans and peas.  They are an incredibly healthy food crop, containing 21-36% protein and no cholesterol.  They are also significantly cheaper than other sources of protein like meat and cheese.

Not only are they healthy for humans, certain varieties are an efficient forage source for livestock owners in the southeast.  The nutrition content found in Peanut grass rivals that of alfalfa and is generally cheaper by 5 to 8 dollars a bale.  It is also used as a ground cover in many water deficient areas since it is hardy, disease resistant and requires little mowing.

While you and your buddies are being coaches of the couch take the time to have a little peanut trivia and consider how beneficial they are to a healthy diet.  For more information or to find recipes go to www.peanut-institute.org.

In a post about carbon and farming a couple of days ago, a reader noted that I wasn’t talking about biochar, which surprised me, because I’d never heard of it! That’s one of the great things about farming – there’s always something new to learn. So I did a little bit of research and thought I’d share what I learned with everyone else. Here’s the low-down.

Biochar is a clever idea that has the potential to divert enormous amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it into the soil. Basically, whenever trees or crop residues burn or rot, they release most of the carbon they contain into the atmosphere. This is a natural process, although one that can be accelerated or initiated by the actions of man. However, this CO2 can be stored in the form of biochar. (Biomass-derived charcoal = “biochar”.)

To produce biochar, you take biomass, any biomass, and subject it to a variety of processes. People have made biochar for thousands of years; pre-Columbian Central and South American farmers used to produce it as a soil supplement to increase their crop yields. It’s also known as dark earth or terra preta. You can make biochar as simply as taking a pile of biomass, setting it on fire, and covering it with soil so that the fire smolders and pyrolysis takes place. (Pyrolysis is heating in the absence of oxygen.) The resulting substance is a very high carbon charcoal-like material that makes a fantastic soil additive. The beautiful part is, once the biochar is mixed into soil, it remains stable for hundreds or even thousands of years. There are huge biochar deposits in parts of South America that go down as deep as two meters – soil that was made by primitive farmers thousands of years ago is still there, still holding on to that carbon.  (continue reading below graphic)

Today biochar is produced with much more advanced techniques, and the most recent development is a proprietary process created by an Australian energy company, BEST Energies. Their “Agrichar” process uses a low-heat pyrolysis that actually produces energy and synthetic gas as by-products. You can buy Agrichar, and other biochar products, or make biochar for yourself. It’s a great soil additive and has literally doubled total yields on test fields. Biochar reduces nutrient leaching, increases bioavailability of soil nutrients, improves water retention, and cuts down on the need for fertilizer. Probably the best part is that creating biochar doesn’t have to be high-tech; it’s a tool that can be used by the poorest and least sophisticated farmers, as well as huge high-tech corporate farms.

Biochar won’t solve the global warming problem on its own, but it does seem like it could be a major tool in getting control of the carbon budget. I will keep up to date on developments with biochar, and will keep you posted.

Additional Reading on this Topic: Discover Magazine Biochar

You’ve probably heard of carbon credits, an idea many environmentalist have promulgated for controlling CO2 emissions by industry and transportation. The concept is simple; if your factory is going to produce a million tons of CO2, you buy carbon credits to offset this emission. Using a combination of regulation and market forces, the idea is to encourage reduction in CO2 emissions by making it more expensive to output carbon, as well as to give the environmentally-minded a way to make a contribution to the carbon problem’s solution by offsetting their own carbon output. The credits themselves are derived from things like carbon sequestration projects or tree-planting operations. Start a factory, plant a forest – the idea is that it balances out.

One of the hindrances to this whole scheme is that there are no objective standards for what defines a carbon credit. Some scam artists have already made small fortunes selling bogus credits to well-meaning greens, credits that don’t go to any projects at all, only to a bank account somewhere in the Cayman Islands. But legitimate credit programs exist, and they need some baselines by which their operations can be judged. Novecta, a joint venture between the Iowa and Illinois Corn Growers Associations, is attempting to create such a standard, and recently held the first meeting of their Carbon Sequestration Standard Committee in Des Moines, Iowa.

The purpose of the committee is to create an industry-wide standard for validating carbon offsets resulting from soil carbon sequestration or greenhouse gas emission reductions at the soil interface. The committee was selected by Novecta from leading agriculture businesses and members of the carbon industry including aggregators, verifiers, exchange traders, soil scientists and others interested in carbon measurements. Novecta Managing Director says that the group “is developing a standard to validate soil-based carbon offset methodologies and systems that will be broadly accepted. This standard is a key step toward rewarding farmers who use environmentally sound farming practices.”

In the first meeting, the committee agreed that their set of standards would include a soil-based standard that addressed net changes in greenhouse gas emissions, including fuel used directly for production on the land, and that encompasses agricultural practices and nutrient management. The committee has completed its first draft, and will be having a second draft review in a meeting in mid-October.

As these standards develop, it will become more straightforward for farmers to apply to have their land registered as a carbon sequestration zone, and to receive payments for good land management practices – a win for the environmentalists, and a win for farmers as well.

As I’ve discussed on this site several times before, there’s quite a controversy over how much biofuels have contributed to the historic run-up of food prices globally. A new UN report on food and agriculture indicates that biofuel production is responsible for about 15 percent of the rise in global food prices.

UN spokespeople have previously condemned biofuels in extremely aggressive language; one official called the use of farmland for fuel production a “crime against humanity”. Critics of biofuels alleged that the production of fuel from corn and other crops was responsible for 75 percent of the rise in food prices, a claim I disputed.

However, as experienced market analysts noted, the agricultural sector is an economically rational sector. High food prices and strong demand spur increases in output, and the demand for corn and other crops for biofuel production led, not to starvation, but to increased production of those crops. Food price rises are now slowing and reversing, according to food economists, as a result of increased production to meet strong demand. The world economic slowdown, while bad news overall, is also likely to push food prices back down from historic highs, particularly for staple crops like wheat.

Other analysts have pointed out that while food prices did rise, they did so at a considerably slower rate than other commodities. While it is natural for people facing high food prices to try and pin the blame for the situation, the simple fact is that biofuels represent only a small part of the problem, and one that will be fixed over time by market forces.