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The Wide World of the Humble PeanutAwake!—2003 | April 22
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By the early 1800’s, peanuts were being grown commercially in South Carolina in the United States. During the American Civil War, which began in 1861, peanuts served as food for soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
At the time, however, many people thought of peanuts as food for the poor. This perception partly explains why American farmers of the day did not cultivate peanuts extensively for human consumption. Moreover, before the invention of mechanized equipment about the year 1900, cultivating peanuts was very labor-intensive.
But by 1903 pioneering American agricultural chemist George Washington Carver had begun research into new uses for the peanut plant. He eventually developed more than 300 products from it, including beverages, cosmetics, dyes, medicines, laundry soap, insecticide, and printer’s ink. Carver also encouraged local farmers to break with their practice of cultivating only cotton, which was depleting the soil, and to alternate with crops of peanuts. At the time, the boll weevil was devastating cotton crops, prompting many farmers to follow Carver’s advice. The result? Peanuts were so successful that they became a major cash crop in the southern United States. Today a monument to Carver stands in Dothan, Alabama. And the town of Enterprise, Alabama, has even erected a monument to the boll weevil, since that insect’s ravages helped to motivate farmers to cultivate peanuts.
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The Wide World of the Humble PeanutAwake!—2003 | April 22
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The United States harvests billions of pounds [more than a billion kilograms] of peanuts annually, producing almost 10 percent of the world total.
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