Spring rains delay gathering of crops

Colbert County farmer Luther Bishop is familiar with the ups and downs associated with farming and how, when you least expect it, Mother Nature can throw you a curve ball in the form of too much rain or not enough rain.

Bishop said excessive rains during the spring planting season left him unable to get his corn and soybeans planted at the proper time.

“It was very devastating to us,” said Bishop, who farms on the west end of Colbert County.

As a result, he said he’s expecting an “average crop” of corn and soybeans.

“The soybeans are pretty good, the corn is OK,” Bishop said.

Bishop said a fellow farmer in Hamilton only got half of his crop in the ground due to the excessive rain and “a lot of it was not very good.”

What was odd about this spring’s weather, he said, was farmers located just a few miles away are getting record yields.

“It’s all over the board,” Bishop said.

Franklin County Extension agent Ali Gotcher said the rain was a good thing in terms of forage as it provided a lot of grazing. But for hay producers, it wasn’t good.

“They need dry weather to cut and bale hay, and the moisture made it difficult,” Gotcher said. “A lot of hay producers usually get their first cutting by Memorial Day, if not before. This year, because of the rain, some didn’t cut until mid-June or even July, which is really unheard of here. That put them behind all season.

The impact of the delayed harvest could be felt into the winter season.

“If we have a bad winter, producers who couldn’t bale enough hay will have to buy hay or feed to supplement,” Gotcher said.

Besides hay, Gotcher said corn and soybeans were also impacted by the spring rains.

“It was hard to get equipment in and out of fields. Farmers couldn’t always spray for weeds or manage crops like usual, because fields were too wet to bring in equipment.

“If they [farmers] got crops in before the rains hit, they had a good growing season. But hay producers struggled,” she said.

In Lauderdale County, farmer James Walker said he had a tight window to get his cotton crop in the ground before the rainfall arrived.

“The problem was, it was hard to get a crop in the ground,” he said. “My family was pretty fortunate. There were some farmers that struggled mightily to get a crop in.”

While he was able to get his cotton crop planted, Walker said some rain in August, which was rather dry, would have improved the yield.

However, he said the spring rains helped his early corn crop, which turned out “really, really good.”

Some farmers struggled to get their wheat harvested due to the rain, Walker said.

“Wheat is a crop that when it’s ready, you have about a 10- to 14-day window or quality starts to drop off dramatically,” he said.

Commodity prices are “horrible now for all the crops,” Walker said.

Brown Nolen of the Brown Nolen Crop Insurance Agency in Florence said cotton crops were planted later than normal this year due to the rainfall in May and June.

He said farmers in northwest Alabama are just starting to pick their crops, where normally they would already be harvesting, and cotton gins would be running.

“Everything was planted later,” Nolen said. “A lot of it was planted right up to the deadline of May 20. Normally, gins would be running by Oct. 1.”

May 20 was the deadline to plant cotton and be eligible for crop insurance, he said.

Nolen said some areas received sufficient rain to make a good crop, while others did not.

He said this year’s crop will likely average 900 to 1,000 pounds per acre.

“Early cotton in Colbert County is about 850 pounds per acre,” Nolen said.

He anticipates yields will vary in Franklin, Colbert and Lauderdale counties.

He said Lauderdale County farmers haven’t started picking cotton, nor have the gins opened.

Some farmers were unable to get their wheat crop harvested in time to plant their cotton.

Noln said prices are also an issue. A few years ago, cotton was up to $1 per pound but now is expected to average around 64 cents per pound.

Aware of the losses some farmers experienced because of excessive rainfall from May 1 through June 30, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated 25 Alabama counties as natural disaster areas.

The 25 primary counties included in the disaster designation are Blount, Calhoun, Chambers, Cherokee, Cleburne, Colbert, Coosa, Cullman, DeKalb, Etowah, Franklin, Madison, Jackson, Marion, Lawrence, Marshall, Limestone, Morgan, Macon, Russell, St. Clair, Talladega, Tallapoosa, Walker and Winston.

“The excessive rain during this year’s planting season impacted over half of Alabama’s counties, causing delays or preventing planting altogether,” Pate said in the release. “We recognize the hardships our farmers have faced with the late spring flooding and now the current drought. We encourage them to reach out to their local USDA offices to explore available funding and support.”

Farmers in eligible counties have eight months from the declaration date of Sept. 15 to apply for emergency loans.

Maria Camp contributed to this report.