By Wesley Harris
A little worm brought on an explosion in the production of peanuts in Lincoln Parish in the early 1900s.
The boll weevil, the number one enemy of cotton, entered Texas from Mexico in 1892 and marched north and east, reaching Lincoln Parish in 1905 and infecting the entire South by 1922. Farmers panicked since cotton was the primary crop sold by farmers. While they grew corn for livestock and vegetables for their families, cotton was grown for cash.
When the boll weevil reached north Louisiana and devastated the cotton crop most farmers depended on, new crops were sought to provide an alternative for generating cash. Diversification was encouraged as a new strategy; if one crop failed, perhaps another would succeed.
Thus the turn to peanuts as an alternative cash crop.
Lincoln Parish’s sandy soil is perfect for peanuts. The “nuts”—which really aren’t nuts at all but a cousin to the pea—grow underground so clay or other tightly compacted soils are not friendly to peanuts.
Thirteen states produce or grow peanuts commercially with half of all production coming from Georgia. While Louisiana is one of the 13, the state grows only about one percent of America’s peanuts.
With the arrival of the boll weevil to Lincoln Parish came a movement, fostered by farmers’ unions, for diversified farming. The result was a move away from the one-crop system—mostly cotton—to the planting of vegetables, fruits, more corn and a large acreage to peanuts.
The initial step of peanut culture was made in the fall of 1908 when a committee was sent by a farmers’ union to investigate the crop in Virginia. The committee reported that the climate and soil of Lincoln Parish was far better adapted to the peanut than that of Virginia.
Peanuts were planted on a large scale in Lincoln Parish for the first time in 1909. With 4,000 acres harvested, the average yield was 20 bushels per acre or 80,000 bushels for the parish. The first nuts sold brought 85 cents a bushel, but the price eventually reached $2.00 a bushel, giving farmers about $35 an acre.
Figuring the average price paid per bushel at $1, the experiment crop netted farmers $80,000, much better than they could have expected with the same acreage in a successful cotton crop.
An estimated 15,000 acres of peanuts were planted in Lincoln Parish in 1910. “It seems to be a sure money crop. Besides the nuts which pay more per acre than cotton, the hay can be gathered to supply thousands of head of cattle,”a Bossier City newspaper reported.
In January 1910, the Ruston Leader reported, “The peanut crop in Lincoln Parish during the past season was not only a large one for the acreage planted, but was also a paying crop to the planters. It has placed dollars in their pockets or their bank accounts whereas, under the destruction wrought by the boll weevils, the planting of cotton would have only given them dimes.”
Lincoln Parish farmers received over $110,000 for a portion of the 1910 crop. That may not sound like much but $110,000 in 1910 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $3,631,000 today,
The $110,000 did not include at least six boxcars of peanuts in storage to be held for seed. Nor did it include large quantities of nuts saved by farmers for their own planting by themselves and for sale for that purpose to those less fortunate. It only included proceeds from peanuts shipped from Ruston and Choudrant. Shipments of the crop from Dubach, Simsboro, and Alexton [a rail stop between Dubach and Ruston] were not included in the count.
The numbers available show as many as one million pounds of peanuts were shipped from Lincoln Parish from the 1910 crop.
By the planting season of 1912, peanut factories controlled by Virginia corporations were built in Ruston. Lincoln Parish had become the largest peanut-raising parish in Louisiana. Farmers throughout north Louisiana could take their harvest to Ruston to sell to a commercial enterprise rather than worrying about finding out-of-state buyers and handling shipping themselves.
Farmers also found using the peanut plant vegetation as livestock feed, especially for hogs, was another benefit of growing the crop. “. . . it may be said that there is no better or more economical diet for hogs for not only does the peanut produce a most peculiarly distinctive flavor but the expense of feeding the hogs in the regular way is almost done away with as they are allowed to root for their own living,” announced one newspaper.
Other parishes began to catch on to the peanut craze following Lincoln’s lead.
In 1914, acreage in peanuts in Lincoln Parish was reduced as more cotton was grown than in the past few years. With better methods to deal with the boll weevil, the move to even more diversification, and increased competition from other north Louisiana farmers, Lincoln Parish peanut production began to drop slightly.
A peanut factory was built in Minden in 1926. But the Great Depression of the 1930s devastated farmers. Then World War II took many farmers out of the fields to serve in the military. Over time, timber, poultry, fruit trees, and cattle replaced row crops as the dominant Lincoln Parish agricultural products.
But Lincoln Parish still has great soil for raising peanuts. If you get some “nuts” into the ground by July 1, there’s still time to raise a crop for this year.
