There's not a better way to pick peanuts?

Factual Questions
1

I’m 41 and I’ve never lived more than 100 miles from where I am now and I’ve just learned how peanuts are picked on a farm. Now, I’ve grown peanuts and picked peanut for personal consumption and it didn’t bother me that you take a rake, pull the vines, and then pull the peanuts off of the vine. It was all on a small scale and pleasant work up to about a half peck.

Last week, I went for a ride and saw a field with about a dozen workers in it. There was a tractor in the field also, doing something. Not having anything better to do I stopped to watch. Watching other people work sometimes amuses me. The tractor was raking up vines and depositing them in a pile. Then the workers would gather around the pile and sit on buckets, and then I realized that they were picking peanuts!!!

After a quick trip to the peanut butter isle at the grocery store, it’s easy to realize that many peanuts are consumed in America. My question: Is there not a better way to harvest peanuts than picking them by hand?

2

IANAPE but …

It seems there are peanut combines. I’ve never watched these particular machines work but I assume the peanuts are plowed out of the ground and brought into the machine by an auger. Then the combine separates the nuts from the foliage. I suppose the nuts are then dried either by gas dryers or by being spread. It’s also possible that after the nuts are dug up they are left to dry on the ground and then picked up by the combine for separation.