Well it looks as if feeding our herds may cost a pretty penny this season.
The Associated Press
CHALYBEATE SPRINGS, N.C. – Farmers planted more than 1 million acres of corn this year, hoping to cash in on the highest prices in a decade and a push to produce ethanol to curb the nation’s dependency on foreign oil.Instead, drought has reduced the 2007 crop in North Carolina to a third fewer bushels an acre than in the 2006 harvest, leaving some farmers well short of the profits they had hoped to reap. The 1.1 million acres of corn planted in the state was 39 percent more than what was planted last year.
“The guys were gambling on corn,” said Eric Spaulding, Johnston County’s agricultural extension agent. “Corn has been one of those crops where you hit it good every five years. Well, we’ve had three good years back-to-back, so they were really rolling the dice this year, bucking the odds.”
The combination of sparse rain and oppressive heat also has farmers worried about the fate of two hardier cash crops – tobacco and soybeans.
High temperatures are scalding the tops of tobacco plants already stressed by a lack of water, turning the best and most profitable leaf a bright yellow that will earn farmers an unwelcome grade from buyers and far less money.
Heat is also searing soybean plants that are just starting to bloom, raising the risk they will just drop flowers and leaves and won’t produce the bean pods that also put make money for farmers.
“We’ve had drought and we’ve had hot weather before, but I can’t remember it being this dry and this hot at the same time,” said Ricky Betts, who lives in the northern Harnett County community of Duncan and grows tobacco, corn and soybeans on about 1,500 acres in two counties.
Betts, who farms with his brother, Ronnie, opted for fewer acres of soybeans and gambled on 200 acres of corn. It was their first venture with this less heat-and-drought tolerant crop since the early 1980s. Now, Betts remembers why he ditched corn for soybeans back then.
“We jumped into the corn kind of wide-open,” Betts said. “It was just a bad year to get into it.”
Betts, who has been farming since 1977, thinks drought and heat have killed off about half his corn crop. Two of his corn fields demonstrate how occasional rain can have an effect.
In a 12-acre field, there are scattered ears of ugly yellow field corn that will produce feed for cattle, chickens and other farm animals which might yield 80 bushels an acre; he was hoping for 125. Betts and his brother had to walk deep into the stalks in the 20-acre field to find a single ear to examine. He says he will just cut down the stalks and plow them under.
A harsh Easter Sunday freeze was the bellwether of the growing season, killing the fruit-producing blossoms of apples and peaches while freezing grapes, strawberries and blueberries. North Carolina’s peach and apple crops will be the lowest since 1955, state agriculture officials said.
Sizzling weather only exaggerated the demise of corn, hay and other row crops. With six days of extreme heat last week and the threat of more 100-degree days to follow, farmers said what corn they have is now baking in the fields, forcing them to harvest early or experience an even larger loss.
“It’s like sticking it in the oven and just cooking it to death,” said Gary Thomas, a Lee County farmer who cultivates about 1,800 acres of corn, tobacco and soybeans in Chatham, Harnett and his home county. It’s just bad. The drought’s bad, but the heat’s what’s killing us now.”
Information from: The News & Observer, http://www.newsobserver.com
