Less-rigid health and safety standards can also help them bring peanuts to market at a much lower price than American farmers. A longer growing season allows some parts of Mexico to produce two crops a year, compared to Virginia's one. But so far, Mexico's peanuts look pretty good, Birdsong and others said. Local farmers' last hope is that Mexico's water problems will limit production there. Farmers in some regions must first acquire water rights for irrigation before they can plant peanuts.
China already grows more peanuts than any other country.
Most of the peanuts grown there are crushed for oil and used internally. China has enough land to grow 10 times as many peanuts as the United States, according to Cotton, and it has available labor to hand-plant, harvest, pick and grade, avoiding costly machinery. It costs about three times less to produce peanuts in China than in the United States, because of higher land values and machinery costs, according to a 1998 study. Also, China's soils are sandy enough to grow Virginia-type peanuts almost as plump and tasty as those grown here, local farmers said. The country currently is barred from shipping raw peanuts into the United States because of a disease called peanut stripe virus, which deforms the leaves of the plant and effects its growth, said Jeannette Anderson, executive director of the American Peanut Council.