The following e-mail was sent to NC State Extension agents last week.

There are a lot of fields with drought stressed peanuts with some areas severe with separation of kernels from pods. It is always a challenge to know how a load of peanuts will grade and what tips a load into Seg 2 or Seg 3 from Seg 1. I have several correspondences I will post, but in the process of those exchanges, I have thought about how to dig and harvest. From a quality standpoint, I suggest picking the good areas and bad areas separately when possible. This can be done on some fields but certainly not all fields. But where it can be done, I think it will help you avoid loads going Seg 2 or even Seg 3 (we don’t know if we will have aflatoxin, but it is possible.)