Enemies.
There are no serious enemies to the peanut crop as yet. Plants are sometimes destroyed by cutworms. The nuts may be attacked by weevils if kept a long time, a trouble that occurs chiefly in warehouses and confection ary establishments.
Uses.
Peanuts are put t:, a great variety of uses. Every one is familiar with the roasted nuts for eating out of hand. Great quantities are thus consumed. In addition, the nuts are manufac tured into a great variety of confections and can dies, while the vines, either with or without the nuts, are valuable for stock-feeding, and the growth of the plant is important in soil-renovation.
Peanut butter.—Of late, peanut butter is receiv ing wide advertising and is finding a ready market. It does not soon become rancid, can be carried to sea and can be had in packages to suit the most exacting demands. While it will probably never become a rival of butter, it has a legitimate use and is likely to become a staple commodity.
Salted peanuts have in late years become an important competitor of the salted almond, and be cause of the difference in cost the peanut is likely to find a greatly increased use as a confection of this class.
Peanut oil is one of the best known vegetable oils, but because of its high food value, quality and keeping properties, it has found little use in the arts. It is used chiefly as a substitute for olive oil. Marseilles is the great peanut oil factory of the world, the supply of nuts being drawn largely from Africa, India and Spain. This oil is not manu factured in the United States, but the discussion of it here is just now receiving considerable attention. This is due to the fact that the owners of cotton oil mills recognize the importance of the peanut as an oil-producing plant, in general adapted to the same soil and climatic conditions as cotton. With the oil mills in the field the next step is the pro duction of the nut in sufficient quantity to provide a supply to the mills and at a price which shall be remunerative to the farmer and at the same time leave a margin of profit to the millman. Although the subject is being extensively discussed, only one experiment to demonstrate the profit and loss in the venture has been carried out. This has demon strated that the work can be done without loss, but it has not been sufficient to show the advantage of careful manufacturing on an extensive scale.
[See Oil-Bearing Plants.] As a forage erop.—The peanut vines make hay possessing a feeding value for cattle, mules and horses equal to that of clover hay. The yield of hay when the crop is well manured and cultivated ranges from one to three tons per acre. The value of the forage is each year becoming better recog nized, and more careful attention is being given to harvesting the nuts in such a way as to preserve the hay in the best condition for feeding purposes. For best results the vines should be cut or dug before frost has touched the leaves. If frosted, the food value of the hay is lessened and the yield materially reduced.
The following statement of the analysis of pea nut hay in comparison with other standard hay crops shows the great merit of this plant as a forage crop : more than call attention to the importance of the variations in nuts for special purposes. There is a range from 26.49 to 35.37 in the protein content of different samples and a range of 41.17 to 55.37 in the percentage of fat. In special-purpose nuts these differences are of great importance.
As roughage, peanut hay compares very favor ably with clover hay. The whole plant, vine and nuts, noted as "peanut vine," is superior to alfalfa in fat and almost its equal in protein content. The value of the peanut as a stock- and hog-food is well recognized, and with the increasing interest in swine and cattle through the South a great increase in the acreage of peanuts grown is sure to come. For hogs, peanuts are planted and cultivated and the hogs allowed to harvest the crop. This let-alone method of harvesting has been justified in the commercial results as reported by the Arkansas Experiment Station. As compared with corn, the standard hog-food, one-fourth of an acre of peanuts produced 313 pounds of pork, while a like area in corn produced 109 pounds of pork, a remar::able showing in favor of Spanish peanuts. Cattle, horses and poultry as well as swine, are fond of peanuts and thrive on them. Horses doing normal work have been maintained on whole nuts with as good apparent results as on a ration of corn and hay.