Two trials were conducted for two years on virgin areas of poor «campo» soils (a dark red latosol and a red-yellow latosol) of the Botucatu region, State of São Paulo, to study the possibility of using them for the peanut production with the aid of fertilizers. Of the compared treatments, phosphorus (ordinary superphosphate) and limestone were the principal yield increasing factors. The low fertility level of the soils and the ease of its correction can be evidenced by showing that, in the second year of the experiment on the dark red latosol, the «no lime, no fertilizer>> plots yielded 476 kg/ha (kilograms per hectare) of pods, the plots treated with lime + NPK only in the previous year, 1,655 kg/ha, and those additionally fertilized with NPK in the second year, 2,096 kg/ha. On the red-yellow latosol, the yields were, respectively, 333, 2,065, and 2,224 kg/ha. The rate of application of limestone was 2 metric tons per hectare; in the first and second years the NPK treatments corresponded to 30-60-30 and 30-45-30 kg/ha of N-P2O5-K2O, respectively. The lime and NPK treatments influenced considerably the quality of the pods. The shelling percentages varied between 70 and 73 in the lime + NPK plots of both soils, but decreased, respectively, to 34 and 10 in the «no treatment>> plots of the dark red latosol and the red-yellow latosol. Even the oil content of the seeds was appreciably increased by the mentioned treatments.