Near almost every peanut farm, you will find a peanut buying station - an enormous store where businesses buy raw peanuts from farmers.
When the farmers' trucks arrive at the buying station they stop first at a U.S. government checkpoint. Here an inspector gives each load of peanuts a "report card." The peanuts are graded as either one, two, or three. Grade-one peanuts are the driest, cleanest, and meatiest. These peanuts are the most valuable and they are the only kind that can be used in human food.
After the peanuts are graded, they are weighed. The buyers pay the farmers for their crops, and the peanuts are unloaded into a huge pit that holds four to six tons of peanuts. A conveyor belt lifts the peanuts from the pit into a storage tank that looks like a short, fat silo. Within a few days, the raw nuts are loaded into trucks going to the shelling plant.
