Where do peanuts come from?

The peanut, Arachis hypogaea, is a legume rather than a nut. It flowers above ground, then pushes a stalk called a peg down into the soil where the pod forms and ripens, which is why the crop needs light, sandy, well-drained ground: heavy clay grips the pods and they tear off when the plant is lifted. It also needs 100 to 150 frost-free days, 500 to 1,000 millimeters of rain concentrated in the growing period and dry weather at harvest, and it fixes its own nitrogen, so it fits into rotations with cereals and cotton on soils too poor for much else. That combination puts it across a broad band from about 40 degrees north to 40 degrees south, on the North China Plain, the Deccan and Saurashtra, the Sahel, the sandy coastal plain of the US Southeast and the loess of central Argentina.

In 2024 China grew 19.6 million tonnes of groundnuts in shell, 34% of the world's 57.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). India was second with 11.9 million tonnes (21%), Nigeria third with 4.3 million tonnes, then United States with 2.9 million tonnes and Myanmar with 1.7 million tonnes. Production is far less concentrated than in most oilseeds: 108 countries reported a crop, and everything outside the ten largest came to 18% of the total. World output was +24% against ten years earlier and +10% against five, with India growing fastest among the leaders at +4.6% a year.

Crushed into oil the map shifts. World groundnut oil production was 6.4 million tonnes in 2023, led by India with 2.3 million tonnes (36%) and China with 1.8 million tonnes, then Nigeria, Myanmar and Sudan (FAOSTAT). India crushes a larger share of its crop than China does, which is why the two swap places between the shell and oil tables. The other pattern worth noting is that the countries which grow the most are not the ones that sell abroad: China and India consume nearly all of what they produce as oil, paste and roasted snacks, while the export trade is carried by Argentina, the United States and a handful of others whose domestic markets are small relative to their crop.

The production and export tables barely overlap. World exports of raw groundnuts (HS 1202) were worth $4.7 billion in 2024, led by Argentina on 20% of the value, India on 18% and United States on 14% (CEPII BACI). China, the largest producer, ships 10%, and is also the largest buyer, taking 13% of world imports; it exports high-value shelled kernels and blanched product while importing cheaper raw nuts for crushing. Netherlands is second on 12%, but most of that is blanched, split and re-exported into the rest of Europe rather than eaten in the Netherlands.

Three different products move under three different lines, and they have different leaders. Raw groundnuts are HS 1202. Groundnut oil is HS 1508, a much smaller trade worth $760.7 million in 2024, in which India supplied 46% and China bought 57%, an unusually one-to-one flow. Prepared and preserved groundnuts, the roasted, salted and coated products of HS 200811, were worth $2.3 billion, with China on 22% and Netherlands on 16%. Aflatoxin rules cut across all three: origins that can consistently meet European and Japanese limits capture the confectionery premium, while lots that fail are diverted to crushing or to markets with looser tolerances, so the same crop can be worth very different amounts depending on where its paperwork lets it go.

Peanuts have no futures contract anywhere. Unlike soybeans they never developed an exchange-traded benchmark, partly because the crop is graded on size and appearance for the edible trade rather than on a single uniform specification, and partly because the two largest producers keep their crops at home. Prices are settled instead by contract between growers and shellers before or during planting, and internationally by assessed quotations for named grades delivered to Europe and Asia. In the United States the marketing loan rate set in the farm bill acts as a floor under grower prices, a remnant of the quota and price support system that governed the crop until 2002.

This site's series is Groundnuts, CIF Europe, which stood at $1,250/t in August 2026, unchanged from a year earlier (World Bank Pink Sheet). Its nominal record was $2,528/t in December 2011; in real terms the peak came near the start of the series, at $8,795/t in November 1980, and the low was $585/t in September 1985. Over ten years the series was -20%. The oil trades separately: Groundnut oil, CIF Rotterdam was $1,833/t in August 2026, +10% against a year earlier, with a record of $2,502/t in December 2012. Both are CIF quotes, so they include freight and insurance into Europe and sit above the price at the loading port.

Two ambiguities matter. Production on this page is groundnuts in shell, while the trade is almost all shelled kernels, and shelling removes roughly a quarter to a third of the weight, so the two tables are not directly comparable. And a peanut quote depends on what is being quoted: edible-grade kernels are sold by type (runner, Virginia, Spanish, Java), by count per ounce, by percentage of sound mature kernels and against a maximum aflatoxin level, while crushing-grade nuts are priced off the value of the oil and cake they contain. A cargo that fails an aflatoxin test at the destination port loses the difference between those two markets in a single laboratory result.

Aspergillus molds grow on peanuts stressed by drought or dried badly, and produce aflatoxins that are regulated at very low levels in the European Union, Japan and increasingly China. Meeting those limits requires irrigation or reliable rainfall, fast curing, cold storage and optical sorting, which only some origins can afford. The result is two prices for the same crop: a premium edible market open to origins with the infrastructure, and a discounted crushing market for everything else. A tightening of limits or a run of border rejections reroutes trade within a season.

India's kharif groundnut crop is planted with the June monsoon in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka and is largely unirrigated, so its size turns on the timing of the rains rather than on planted area. A late onset or a long break in July shrinks pods and raises aflatoxin risk at once. Because India is both a large crusher and a large exporter of kernels and oil, a short monsoon lifts the world edible price and the groundnut oil price together, and pulls Indian oil demand toward imported palm and soybean oil.

China grows more peanuts than anyone and still buys more than anyone, because its crushers want cheap raw nuts and its snack and paste market wants premium kernels. Its imports are therefore a spread trade: when domestic prices rise relative to landed African, Indian or South American nuts, buying jumps within weeks. Chinese demand also sets the floor under groundnut oil, since it takes the majority of world groundnut oil imports and treats the oil as a premium cooking product rather than a commodity fat.

Most of the US crop grows on the sandy coastal plain of Georgia, Alabama, Florida and the Carolinas, where hurricanes at digging time in September and October can flatten windrows and spoil curing peanuts on the ground. Shellers contract acreage with growers before planting at a fixed price, so a weather loss changes who bears the cost rather than the price paid to contracted farmers, and shows up instead in the export offer and in the following season's contract terms.

Argentina is the largest exporter of raw groundnuts even though it grows a small share of the world crop, because Cordoba's soils and its blanching and sorting plants are built for the European confectionery trade. Argentine growers sell in dollars and spend in pesos, so the official exchange rate, the gap to the parallel rate and periodic export tax changes decide when the crop is released. A strong peso or a higher export duty slows farmer selling and widens European premiums within a few weeks.

Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Niger grow peanuts on the southern edge of the Sahara, where the season is short and rainfall is the binding constraint. The crop there is grown by smallholders with little irrigation, minimal drying infrastructure and high aflatoxin exposure, so it rarely reaches the European edible market and instead supplies domestic oil mills and regional trade. A dry year cuts oil supply across the region and raises the price of imported palm and soybean oil that replaces it.

Groundnut oil is a premium cooking oil rather than a commodity fat, and buyers substitute toward palm, soybean, sunflower and rapeseed oil when the gap widens; that ceiling caps how far the oil price can run. On the food side peanuts compete with almonds, cashews and hazelnuts in snacks and confectionery, where a large almond or cashew crop takes shelf space. Because peanuts are the cheapest of that group, they gain when tree nut crops are short and lose when they are abundant.

Conventional peanuts oxidize within months, which limits how far and how long they can be shipped for snack and confectionery use. High-oleic varieties, bred to carry a fatty acid profile closer to olive oil, hold their flavor several times longer and command a premium from manufacturers and airlines. Their spread through the US, Argentine and Australian crops has changed which origins can supply distant buyers, and has widened the price gap between segregated high-oleic lots and ordinary runners.

Peanuts are sown when the soil is reliably warm, in April to June in the northern hemisphere and October to December in Argentina and southern Africa. The plant flowers about six weeks later, the fertilized pegs push into the soil, and the pods fill underground over the following two months. Because the crop cannot be judged from above, growers dig sample plants and check the inside of the hulls for color to fix the date. Harvest is a two-step operation: a digger cuts the taproot and inverts the plants so the pods lie on top of the vines to dry in the field for several days, then a combine strips the pods from the vines. Curing continues in wagons with forced warm air until the kernels reach about 10 percent moisture, and this is the step that decides aflatoxin risk, because pods left damp or bruised are where the mold takes hold.

Shelling happens close to the crop. Cleaned pods are cracked between rollers, the hulls are aspirated away, and the kernels are sized over screens and graded by type, count per ounce and the proportion of sound mature kernels. Damaged and discolored kernels are removed electronically on color sorters, and suspect lots are sampled and tested for aflatoxin before they can move into the edible trade. Kernels destined for confectionery are blanched, which means heating them briefly so the red skin can be rubbed off, then split, roasted or coated. Hulls become fuel pellets, bedding and filler.

Nuts that fail the edible grade, along with whole crops in countries that crush rather than export, go to an oil mill. Expeller pressing takes out most of the oil and solvent extraction the rest, leaving crude groundnut oil and groundnut cake or meal, a protein feed of about 45 to 50 percent protein that is widely used in India, China and West Africa. Crude oil is refined, bleached and deodorized for cooking, or left unrefined and sold as an aromatic roasted oil. Peanut butter is made from a different stream entirely: kernels are dry-roasted, blanched, ground twice to a paste, and stabilized with a hard fat to stop the oil separating.

About half the world crop is crushed and about half is eaten whole, and the split is geographic rather than technical. India and China crush the larger part of theirs into cooking oil, which is treated as a premium product in both countries and is not interchangeable in the kitchen with the palm or soybean oil that sits beside it. The United States, Argentina, Brazil and Australia send most of their crop into food: roasted and salted snacks, peanut butter, confectionery centers and coatings, and bakery ingredients.

Everything left over has a market. Groundnut cake and meal feed dairy cattle and poultry across South Asia and West Africa. The haulms, the vines left after the pods are stripped, are baled as dry-season fodder and in the Sahel are worth a meaningful share of the crop's total value. Hulls are burned for process heat or pressed into pellets and bedding. Refined groundnut oil also goes into soap and cosmetics, and the unrefined roasted oil is a flavoring ingredient in East and Southeast Asian cooking.

Shelling and sorting concentrate near the fields because pods are bulky and kernels are not: a handful of shellers handle most of the US crop from plants across Georgia and the Carolinas, Argentina's blanching and sorting capacity clusters around General Cabrera and Rio Cuarto in Cordoba, India's is in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, and China's in Shandong and Henan. Because the same plants also run the aflatoxin testing and the optical sorters that decide whether a lot can enter the European or Japanese market, the sheller rather than the farm is where a crop's destination is fixed.

Cargoes move in containers rather than in bulk vessels, in 20-foot lots of vacuum-packed or jute-bagged kernels, which makes peanuts unusual among oilseeds and ties the trade to container freight rates and to reliable reefer and dry-box availability. The routes run from Rosario and Buenos Aires to Rotterdam and Algeciras, from Savannah and Norfolk to Europe and Canada, from Mundra and Kandla to Southeast Asia and China, and from Qingdao and Dalian outward for the Chinese prepared trade. Rotterdam and Antwerp act as the European hub, where imported kernels are blanched, split and re-exported.

The chokepoints are regulatory rather than physical. A shipment is tested at the border, and a positive aflatoxin result can condemn a container or a whole consignment, so a change in sampling protocol at one destination redirects trade faster than any weather event. Beyond that, the market's deeper fragility is that world trade rests on a few exporting origins while the two largest producers are effectively closed systems: if Argentina or the United States has a bad season, there is no large alternative supplier that can meet European edible specifications at short notice.