Large peanut orders from Chinese traders have cut Senegal’s traditional selling season short this year, rewarding farmers with fat profits but leaving local buyers with slim pickings.

Peanuts are an important export in the West African state of Senegal, with the area around the central city of Kaolack a hive of production.

Groundnuts are a “primary source of income for the vast majority of family farms,” according to a 2017 World Bank report, and employ about two-thirds of the rural population.

But Kaolack’s once-brimming peanut warehouses have been poorly stocked this year.

Most of the activity normally associated with the peanut trade has shifted to nearby villages, such as Sanguil, where Chinese buyers have set up shop.

Baye Niass Fall, a 50-year-old farmer, stands grinning in front of the entrance to the industrial compound in Sanguil, where men pack shelled peanuts into bags for export.

He says he’s made a killing this year selling 15 tons of peanuts “to the Chinese” at a better price than the Senegalese firms that transform the nuts into peanut oil.

This year Senegal produced some 1.4 million tons of peanuts, according to the government, which are a West African staple used in “mafe” sauce.