Complications for farmers

According to records kept at the University of Minnesota Southern Research and Outreach Center (SROC), this past May was the third wettest since record-keeping began in the county.

 

May of 2024 delivered 7.5 inches of rain; in 1991 the area received 7.76 inches. The all-time record-setter was May of 1945, with 7.78 inches.

 

SROC scientist Tom Hoverstad points out though, that the center’s practice is to record the rainfall from a 24-hour period on the following morning. Close to 2 inches of rain, 1.84, fell during the hours of May 31, but was recorded on June 1.

 

“If that had been one day sooner, 2024 would have been the record holder,” he said. As it is, the difference between the three records is less than three tenths of an inch.

 

Along with receiving about three inches more rain than normal, the area also experienced 18 days with measurable rainfall amounts. “That didn’t leave much of a planting window,” Hoverstad said.

 

Coupled with that was 4.5 inches of rain in April, 1.23 inches more than normal, now being followed by an unusually wet June. The first 13 days of the month brought 8 days with rain, shrinking planting opportunities even further. “Area farmers have been fighting that wet soil all spring,” Hoverstand observes.

 

As a tour of area fields shows, the majority of farmers managed to get seeds in the ground only to have fields soaked and sometimes left with large areas of standing water.

 

According to Hoverstad and area agronomist Mark Bernard, this creates different complications depending on the individual circumstances.

 

In some fields, the water drained away relatively quickly, leaving the crop standing in very wet soil. In this case, according to the two scientists, the root systems of the plants may not develop as they should for continued growth and optimal yield. Corn roots typically reach 2 to 3 feet into the ground to support the plants’ height and to find nutrients. With so much water available near the surface, they might not reach for that optimal depth as they are developing.

 

Even in fields where the water drains away without pooling, farmers may lose the expensive nitrogen fertilizers they have applied to their soil. Corn is especially dependent on sufficient levels of  nitrogen for continued development: nitrogen in the soil tends to bond with water, and thus is prone to leach away as the water drains. Exposure to water can also cause the nitrogen to undergo a slight chemical change and become prone to a form of evaporation. This leaves farmers with decisions to make about cost-to-benefit advantages of applying additional nitrogen–which will entail not only the cost of the fertilizer, but the time and resources to apply it and potential damage to plants which might occur during the application.

 

Yet another complex choice confronts farmers who have fields with pools of standing water. Hoverstad explains that, in cool weather, plants can survive even up to four or five days of being submerged. If the water warms, however, bacterial growth accelerates and causes irreversible damage. Farmers with areas where no crop remains must weigh a surprising number of factors as they make decisions about replanting.

 

Among their choices, agronomist Mark Bernard jokes, are “so many decisions it could make your head explode.”

 

Many farmers have a “prevent plant” clause in their crop insurance, “They’re guaranteed a certain level of income from that,” Hoverstad  observed. “But they don’t like to use it.”

 

Based on what he saw in the wet year of 2013, he speculates that it goes against a farmer’s nature to give up on a crop. Farmers must weigh the likely sale price of any crop to be harvested from the replanted portion of the field against the costs and time needed to do the replanting.

 

They must decide whether there is another hybrid of the corn or soybeans which will mature fast enough to “catch up” with undamaged areas.

 

For any who decide not to replant drowned-out sections, “They’re going to want a cover crop,” says Hoverstad. “There’s a rule of thumb about what happens when you let part of a field grow wild unchecked: ‘One year’s weeding equals seven years seeding.’” In other words, farmers might consider planting soybeans or some other dense crop on the open part of the field simply so the cultivated plants will take over the space and prevent weeds from thriving.

 

“There’s nothing wrong with planting soybeans as a cover crop,” said Hoverstad, mentioning there are also other choices.

 

Agronomist Mark Bernard mentions insects and pathogens as another factor which may have been affected by the unusually wet soil. For example, he says, the mild weather probably allowed soybean aphids to overwinter in strong numbers giving them “the potential to be a problem.” However, if soybeans should reach canopy over unusually wet soil, “It is likely to create advantageous conditions for pathogenic fungi which help keep aphid numbers in check, in conjunction with beneficial insects such ladybird beetles, lacewings, syrphid flies and parasitic wasps.”

 

He also suggests, “The wet conditions are definitely favorable for disease development as the season wears on.” Among the diseases he names are stalk rots and leaf disease in corn and white mold and sudden death syndrome in soybeans.

 

Bernard can’t help mentioning that weather patterns in early April had given the impression the spring would be relatively dry.

 

“Nobody saw this coming,” he comments.

 

Just as they must every spring, farmers had made decisions about what crops to plant on which fields at what time. As the surprisingly wet year materialized, some of those decisions turned out to be “lucky,” while some did not.

 

“We know there’s been damage done. Now farmers have to decide how they’re going to respond,” said Bernard. As to whether this next set of choices will be “lucky,” Bernard says the only time those factors can truly be weighed is during harvest, when the results are measurable.

 

“They’ve seen this before,” he says somewhat philosophically. “Farmers use what they know from past experience with all the variables–the seeds, the contour of the land, the fertilizers and herbicides they use.

 

“They have to hedge their bets and go with their gut.”

 

At this point, Bernard suggests, farmers can do essentially nothing while the fields and soil remain so wet. “I think their approach is, ‘We’ll get through this. We can’t do anything about it right now, but we will take care of things when we can.”