UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
DEPARTMENT BULLETIN No. 1401 
Washington, D. C. 
May, 1926 
By 
MARKETING PEANUTS 1 
Harold J. Clay and Paul M. Williams, Marketing Specialists, Bureau of 
Agricultural Economics 
CONTENTS 
Historical sketch 
Leading varieties of peanuts 
Less important varieties 
Commercial types of peanuts 
Harvesting and curing 
Picking or threshing 
How production is financed 
Virginia-North Carolina section 
Georgia and Alabama 
Texas 
Marketing methods 
Methods of marketing farmers' stock 
peanuts 
Warehousing. 
Grades for farmers ' stock peanuts 
Importance of large size 
Farmers' cooperative organizations 
Secondary distribution 
Operation of cleaning and shelling plants 
Grades for Virginia -type peanuts 
Federal grades for Spanish and Runner 
types of peanuts 
Federal inspection of shelled Spanish and 
Runner peanuts 
Settlement of disputes 
Methods of disposing of shelled and 
cleaned peanuts 
Car loading and transportation 
Freight and steamship rates 
Leading centers of production and ship- 
ment ... 
How peanuts reach the consumer 
Page 
12 
Secondary distribution — Continued. 
Special methods of distribution 
The geographical distribution of peanuts. 
Character of receipts in principal mar- 
kets 
Federal market news reports.. 
Price quotations 
Reports of movement 
Imports and exports 
Crop production statistics 
Roasted peanuts in the shell 
Peanut products 
Salted peanuts... 
Peanut butter 
Peanut candy 
Bakery products 
Peanut oil 
Peanut cake and peanut meal 
Peanut flour 
Peanut hulls 
Other by-products 
Peanuts as a feed for hogs 
Imports and exports 
Asiatic peanuts, imports 
Imports from Spain 
Other sources of supply 
Foreign outlets for American peanuts 
Suggestions 
Summary 
Statistical information 
Publications relating to peanuts and peanut 
products 
Page 
48 
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61 
65 
87 
The peanut, now a leading money crop in the Southern States, 
reaches the consumer in many widely different forms. Once grown 
exclusively for roasting and for feeding to hogs, the peanut is now 
even more widely known in the salted form, and immense quantities 
are marketed each year as peanut butter and peanut candy. In 
some years a considerable volume of peanuts has been crushed and 
the crude oil shipped to manufacturers of butter and lard substitutes, 
soap, and salad oil. The course taken by the peanut in its journey 
from the farm to the consumer, then, is necessarily a varied one, with 
many by-paths. 
i Acknowledgment is made to C. W. Kitchen and W. A. Sherman, of the Bureau of Agricultural Eco- 
nomics, for many suggestions, to unpublished data resulting from investigations of N. Menderson, formerly 
of the bureau, in 1917 and 1918, and to Mrs. R. G. Tucker, Mrs. E. R. Estes and Miss Mary Hall, for the 
tabulation of many of the figures used in the charts and tables shown in this bulletin. 
75379°— 26f 1 
