State farmers get late start on crops
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008
SHERRILL — Flooding, persistent rain and cool weather have delayed spring planting by many Arkansas farmers.
This year’s planting progress for grain sorghum, rice, cotton, corn and soybeans is running behind the state’s five-year average, including 2007, according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
“It’s a huge weight pressing down on you,” said Jefferson County farmer Jason Young, referring to the compressed workload caused by this year’s shortened planting season.
Scheduling all the work to be done by a limited number of tractors and tractor drivers will be a challenge, he said.
Monday afternoon, Young finally was able to plant a 40-acre plot of corn just south of Sherrill, nearly 50 days behind schedule.
Many of the county’s rice farmers haven’t even been able to start planting yet, said Don Plunkett, Jefferson County agent with the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service.
“Normal timing is out the window,” Plunkett said.
Although most of Arkansas ’ crops can prosper despite later planting dates, farmers will need to be especially conscientious about timely applications of water, fertilizer, insecticides and fungicides to avoid reduced yields, said Jason Kelley, extension service wheat and feed grains agronomist.
Later-planted crops tend to grow more quickly, so the windows of opportunity for making applications such as fertilizer are likely to be smaller this year, Kelley said.
Arkansas farmers are expected to plant 3, 250, 000 acres of soybeans, 1, 371, 000 acres of rice, 650, 000 acres of cotton, 490, 000 acres of corn and 160, 000 acres of grain sorghum this year, ac- cording to USDA’s statistical service.
As of Monday, only 31 percent of the state’s 2008 grain sorghum crop had been planted, compared with a five-year average of 71 percent at this time of year and 2007 ’s 85 percent, according to the statistics service.
Planting progress for the other crops are: rice 55 percent, compared with 83 percent and 76 percent, respectively; cotton 24 percent, compared with 38 percent and 35 percent; corn 84 percent, compared with 97 percent and 99 percent; and soybeans 19 percent, compared with 25 percent and 20 percent.
Nearly one-third of Arkansas’ soybeans — almost 970, 000 acres — is expected to be planted after winter wheat is harvested. The wheat harvest, which usually begins in late May, is seven to 10 days late because of this year’s cool weather, said Jeremy Ross, the state’s soybean agronomist.
That could lead to reduced yields, Ross said. “And Asian soybean rust is always going to be out there,” he said. Cotton tends to be planted between April 15 and May 15, said Tom Barber, Arkansas’ cotton agronomist. “The later-planted cotton will be exposed to more lateseason heat at night,” which tends to cause cotton to shed its fruit, thus reducing yields, Barber said. Pest and disease pressures also tend to increase in late summer, so later-planted cotton usually is more expensive to produce, he said.
“As long as we have good, warm weather into the fall, planting late is not going to affect us as much,” Barber said.
This year, Kelley says corn farmers will want to plant Bt hybrids, genetically engineered types of corn that include a soil-dwelling bacterium known as Bacillus thuringiensis, which produces toxins that kill pests such as corn borers.
Pest and disease pressures tend to increase as the summer wears on and can cause greater damage to younger plants, he said.
“[Corn borers ] have less of an impact on earlier-planted corn,” Kelley said.
Farmers may also want to select hybrids with relatively stronger stalks that are shorter in stature, because late planted corn is likely to grow taller and have increased problems with “lodging,” where plants fall over and become difficult to harvest, he said.
Farmers also should plant “full-season hybrids” or types of corn that take 110 days or more to mature, because “full-season hybrids tend to have greater heat tolerance,” Kelley said.
Bryan Bonds, who farms near Moscow, just south of Pine Bluff, said persistent rain has made 2008 one of the latest planting years he can remember since he began farming full-time in 1995. Cool soil temperatures — below 60 degrees — also have impeded crop development, he said.
Bonds said his rice and grain sorghum planting have fallen behind schedule, but he’s optimistic he can complete them by mid-May.
“I think there’s a good chance we can still get finished up, if we don’t get another really big rain,” he said.
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