A grower indicated that he was having a great deal of difficulty making money on rotation crops and wanted to focus exclusively on peanuts. To obtain the yield needed for his market, he needed to be out of peanuts only one year. The question was whether or not fallow land would work. My answer was that yes, this could work. My main concern was if weeds grew in the off year, this could be a major issue. He indicated that this was not going happen. He would spray a burndown herbicide in the fallow season. Another concern of mine was nematodes. Weeds can serve as a host for some of the plant parasitic nematodes that we have in North Carolina. The farmer indicated that he was going to plant either wheat or cereal rye as a cover and use that to suppress weeds into the fallow season. This would also prevent nematode populations from increasing. I think this is a good approach. We talked about how important it is not to plant ryegrass (resistance to glyphosate and potentially other herbicides could exist in some ryegrass sources.)

This is a unique situation, but one that is going to work best for this particular grower. His peanuts are doing well and generating consistent income. His rotation crops are not.