This article is pure fiction:
The author is absolutely clueless.
She thinks droughts are due to anthropogenic climate change, and are killing peanuts. That's the opposite of the truth. There's no detectable correlation between droughts and CO2 levels, but:
1. Extra CO2 helps plants grow, especially C3 plants, like peanuts. They grow better and faster, because CO2 is where they get the carbon to make hydrocarbons (i.e., stems, leaves, roots, fruits, seeds, etc.). Their usual state is that they are starved for CO2. Here's a video of a different C3 plant growing at differing CO2 levels:
Here's more information:
2. Extra CO2 makes plants more drought resistant and water-efficient, by improving stomatal conductance relative to transpiration, which is especially helpful in arid regions. As a result, some of the world's deserts and near-deserts are greening:
When air passes through plant stomata (pores), two things happen: the plant absorbs CO2, and the plant loses water through transpiration. When CO2 levels are higher, the ratio of CO2 absorbed to water lost improves, which improves both plant growth and drought resistance. The plants also commonly respond to elevated CO2 by reducing the density of the stomata in their leaves, which reduces water loss. Google finds many articles:
Dave