Farmers on the Southern Plains are facing a new war. After many years of terrible drought, rains have begun to fall, with some sections of the Texas Panhandle setting records for the wettest May ever. Farmers are unable to plant due to the deluge of rain, and prevent plant debates are beginning.
Wesley Spurlock operates a farm in Sherman County, Texas. He and other farmers in the region are having a year of firsts.
“This amount of consecutive days of rain has probably been years since I’ve experienced it,” Spurlock adds.
It’s Too Wet to Plant
The problem is that the much-needed rain is pouring just as farmers are getting ready to sow this year’s crop.
Just two months ago, farmers discussed the idea of not planting a crop if there was no rain to let the crop develop and come out of the ground. Farmers are now confronted with the opposite extreme.
“We received less than a half-inch of moisture from September to the end of April,” adds Spurlock. “We’ve had 14 to 20 inches of rain since the 26th or 28th of April.”
The drought monitor in his region in the northern Texas Panhandle has gone from showing severe drought conditions to now showing unusually dry and not even in drought. And because of the abrupt change, most of his acres have yet to be planted.
“We still have about 80% of our acres to plant,” Spurlock adds. “We had about 2,500 to 3,000 acres of cottonwood aimed for planting, and the final cotton planting date was May 31st.”
cotton
Planting is not the only problem. Wheatlage is ready to be harvested in his region. With fields either flooded or too wet to access, he says they’re forced to consider some serious decisions, some of which will have an effect on local dairies.
“One of the big decisions we’re making right now is that all of our wheat and Triticale are supposed to go to the dairy for wheatlage,” Spurlock adds. “Do we let those choppers and trucks destroy those fields?” Or do we buy ourselves out of that contract and retain this and harvest it as grain, and so there are various choices to be made, but that one is particularly difficult right now because we have a contract with the dairy for around 3000 acres of wheat for silage.”
Before the latest rains, the neighbourhood was already facing a feed shortage. Last year’s drought had a significant influence on production, as well as feed availability.
Forced to Weigh Plant Preventive Measures
According to the USDA’s crop progress report, barely half of the cotton in Texas had been planted as of Monday. With further rain in the forecast, he and other farmers are now obliged to consider the prospect of preventing plant, something he has never done before.
“On our main farm, it’s never been an option,” Spurlock explains. “We’ve never had difficulty getting there. We can always plant, we always get there.”
He claims that their family farm has run the statistics and that the prevent plant does not add up. Instead, they’re considering shifting away from cotton and towards more maize and sorghum for silage planting this year.
Is it El Nio’s fault?
Even getting those crops into the ground will be difficult, as USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey predicts additional rain.
“The signal of a wetter southern great plains is consistent with El Nio, but it is not caused by El Nio,” Rippey explains.
According to Rippey, El Nio hasn’t officially formed yet, and although all indicators point to it arriving in the mid to late summer, the recent heavy rains in the Plains aren’t due to El Nino.
“We haven’t seen that teleconnection, that link between the warm ocean in the eastern Pacific and the atmosphere across North America yet,” he says. “That is the hallmark of El Nio.” We anticipate that happening later this year.”
When El Nio does come, Rippey believes it will bring more rain to the southern tier of states, especially the southern Plains.
Spurlock, for one, has begged and prayed for rain to fall, and despite the fact that it’s creating floods and keeping him out of the field, he’s not given up.
“We’ve taken every planter that we had in the barn out, rebuilt them, fixed all the precision on them, and so we’ve got about 260 feet of planter setting on tractors at the moment,” Spurlock adds.
He said the objective is to sow maize till June. He claims that their region has a longer window for planting maize than cotton. Late-planted cotton might degrade crop quality. He said that when they grow corn, they’ll focus on sorghum silage on what would have been cotton acres.
