ALBANY, Ga. — U.S. peanut farmers are expected to produce their smallest crop since 1915, but there still should be enough to supply consumers with jars of peanut butter and nutty chocolates without significant price increases.

The small crop is a result of farmers responding to low prices, higher production costs and drought.

Large peanut crops in 2004 and 2005 created a surplus that depressed spring contract offers, prompting farmers to reduce their peanut acreage while increasing the amount of land devoted to other crops, such as cotton.

Then dry weather set in, threatening to make an already scaled-back peanut crop even smaller.

"There are two simple reasons: economics and drought," said Dallas Hartzog, a peanut agronomist at Wiregrass Research and Extension Center in Headland, Ala.

U.S. peanut acreage dropped to an estimated 1.3 million acres this year, from about 1.7 million last year — the second largest peanut crop on record, according to the Agriculture Department.