Written by: Caitlin Joyner
Virginia Peanut Travels
It has been an exciting late winter and early spring of celebrating all things peanut and seeing several projects come to life.
Our celebrations began before National Peanut Month in February with our Peanut Production Meeting, where we had close to 200 growers and industry folks present. Congratulations again to our impressive yield contest winners, as well as Westley Drake, who was named our Outstanding Young Peanut Farmer, which was a new category we introduced this year.
National Peanut Month started off on a high note with a visit from the current Peanut Leadership Academy Class. PLA always visits Washington, D.C. as a part of their program, but they have never visited anywhere in the V-C Region before. We were honored to host them in Virginia for a quick but jam-packed tour before heading to D.C. together.
The class visited Amadas Industries, Hubs Peanuts, rode the ferry over to the Jamestown Settlement, made a stop at FeedMore in Richmond, and ended the day checking into our D.C. hotel.
A very special thank you to those who hosted us for a tour, as well as Steinhilber’s Restaurant in Virginia Beach for a wonderful supper before the tour and current PLA participant Eric Bailey, who hosted the group for lunch.
The rest of the week we spent meeting with Congressional leaders and advocating for the Farm Bill. While we left those meetings with continued uncertainty about the Farm Bill, we do know that peanuts and other commodities have been well represented on the Hill by their respective organizations.
Two of our film projects that we have been working on since harvest also aired this March. Our commercial we filmed with NBC Channel 12 in Richmond was a big hit amongst their viewers, as well as on social media. Make sure you check that out on our social media pages if you haven’t seen it yet. A big thanks goes out to Westley Barnes and Richard Kitchen for being a part of that.
Eric Bailey and I were also able to participate in a live interview for the 12 About Town Show as well, which can also be viewed on our social media pages.
Our peanut episode of Where The Food Comes From aired on RFD-TV the evening of March 21st. This was a great tribute to our peanut growers, and it has a home on the Where The Food Comes From YouTube page in case you missed it. Thank you to Billy Gwaltney, Kirk Jones, and Peyton Doyle for being a part of the show.
We ended National Peanut Month participating in a joint peanut butter donation with the Secretary and Commissioner of Agriculture’s offices, as well as our own donation to FeedMore in Richmond in partnership with Peanut Proud.
The Secretary and Commissioner’s offices were able to donate 360 lbs. of peanut butter, and we were able to donate 7 pallets of Peanut Proud peanut butter. Those pallets are distributed to the 7 regional food banks across the state of Virginia to help families in the entire state.
Now things are gearing up for planting season: an exciting time in my opinion. One thing we seem to have the advantage of here in the V-C is consistency year after year in yield and quality. I know that our growers will continue to make that a priority as much as possible.
Here’s to entering this planting season with some optimism for a wonderful and abundant 2025 crop year.
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