U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
HISTORICAL SKETCH 
Few crops have experienced such a rapid growth in acreage and 
production as did the peanut a few years ago. A native of Brazil, 2 
the peanut was carried by early slave ships to Africa, whence it was 
brought to this country along with the slaves in colonial days. The 
Civil War gave the first important impulse to its culture. Before 
then the peanut was little known outside of Virginia, North Carolina, 
and Tennessee. When the Union armies disbanded, the soldiers 
carried a knowledge and an appreciation of peanuts to all parts of 
the country. By 1868, 300,000 bushels were raised in Virginia, 3 
and 11 years later, in 1879, commercial estimates placed the yield for 
the country at 1,725,000 bushels. 4 
Hand work in cleaning and preparing the peanuts for market proved 
impractical on a large scale, and until improved machinery for clean- 
ing and shelling peanuts was invented peanut growing as a business 
was necessarily of restricted importance. The commercial develop- 
ment of the peanut industry may be said to have begun with the 
erection of modern factories in Virginia. A small plant was built in 
Norfolk in 1876, which was increased in capacity in 1880. The sec- 
ond practical cleaning factory was started at Smithfield in 1880, and 
was considerably enlarged in 1885. Other plants followed, until the 
Virginia-North Carolina section was well equipped with factories 
having improved machinery for cleaning and shelling peanuts. 
The most rapid growth in peanut production, however, came in the 
Cotton Belt, notably in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Texas. The 
swift advance of the boll weevil from Texas eastward, with its ruinous 
effect on the cotton yield in many large areas, caused the farmers to 
turn to other crops. The peanut promised a market either directly 
at shelling or crushing mills, or indirectly at pork-packing plants, and 
a supply of a fine quality of hay. A wave of peanut growing, there- 
fore, swept over Texas, Georgia, and Alabama, and the acreage 
planted increased rapidly. Scores of new companies for shelling or 
crushing peanuts sprang up, and many of the older cottonseed-oil 
mills added the equipment necessary for crushing peanuts. The citi- 
zens of Enterprise, Ala., to whom the peanut had brought increased 
prosperity, voted $3,000 in 1919 for the erection of a monument to 
the weevil, on which was inscribed the following : "In profound appre- 
ciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of pros- 
perity, this monument is erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee 
County, Alabama." 
For a few years the peanut boom made money for the farmer. 
After the armistice in November, 1918, however, the combination of 
a decreased demand for vegetable oils and heavy importations of 
Oriental peanuts lessened the interest of southern farmers in this 
crop. The acreage has fallen off in the Cotton Belt, partly owing to 
low prices, but so long as the weevil menaces the prosperity of cotton 
growers the peanut is likely to be a leading money crop in the pro- 
gram of crop diversification now gaining ground in the Southern 
States. An important factor in its production is the practical free- 
dom of the peanut plant from insect pests or plant diseases. More- 
2 Candolle, A. de. Origin of cultivated plants, pp. 411-415. New York. 1890. 
3 Dodge, J. R. Cultivation of the peanut. In Rpt. Comr. Agr. [U. S.] 1868, p. 220. 1869. Inhis Report 
of the Editor. 
i Worthington, C. Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea). In Rpt. Cornr. Agr. [U. S.] 1879, p. 143. 1880. 
