Farmers playing catch-up after rain
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 12, 2015 1:46 PM
Dry weather last week allowed Wayne County farmers to play catch-up on getting their corn and tobacco crops into the ground.
That was particularly important in the northern part of the county, where soil conditions have been wetter, making it difficult to get into the fields, Tyler Whaley, Wayne County Extension Service field crop agent, said Friday.
Fields that had dried out were soaked again this weekend as the remains of Tropical Storm Ana moved across the eastern part of the state.
However, since conditions have improved so much in terms of soil moisture, Whaley thinks that even a half-inch of rain would not really hurt growers.
"We want it to dry out so we can get into the field, but we don't want it to turn completely dry either," he said. "If we get a half-inch or so of rain I don't think it will hurt us by any means. Soil moisture is adequate and growing conditions are favorable. This week has been a great week for growers to get out and do a lot of field work and try to catch up from the recent rains.
"A lot of growers are wrapping up finishing planting corn. We still have some who are transplanting tobacco. We also have some looking at planting cotton, soybeans and peanuts coming up. So really this week in general has been a good week to get field crops in the ground."
Frequent rainfall early in the season forced growers to "skip around" looking for drier land, he said.
"So now the growers were going back this week since conditions have improved and getting those spots they weren't able to get due to it being so wet," Whaley said. "But a lot of our growers are getting their tobacco transplanted as fast as they can this week.
"There is just a touch of corn growers still planting. They should wind up in the next couple of days."
Typically tobacco transplanting starts around April 15. It takes 60 quality days to grow a transplant in a greenhouse. So typically growers try to seed around Valentine's Day. That will put them around the 15th of April, the second week of April to carry those to the field.
Transplanting was delayed to some degree because some growers chose to wait a week, Whaley said.
"As you remember, around the middle of February we had snow and ice so we delayed it a week," he said. "So that had delayed maturity of transplants basically a week for some people.
"A lot of our growers are through setting tobacco in the southern end of the county because it didn't seem like they got as much rain as the guys in the central and northern part of the county. So a lot of our tobacco that has been transplanted this week is in the northern part the county because they are trying to catch up where the weather delayed them."
Whaley said he expects transplanting to wrap up countywide by the end of the month. But he said he would not be surprised to see some planted as late as early June.
Tobacco, much of which is grown under contract, remains the county's main cash crop. However, Whaley expects to see a bit of a decrease in acreage this year.
"There are some factors that play into that," he said. "There is a decrease in cigarette consumption in the U.S. Also other countries are starting to come to the forefront in terms of producing tobacco, primarily Brazil and Zimbabwe.
"In 2014 we had a good crop and yieldwise looking at the whole U.S. and that has an impact on the tobacco outlook and situation as well."
Last year slightly more than 10,000 acres were planted in tobacco in the county. This year Whaley expects it to be between 8,000 and 9,000.
"I would say the big talk has been acreage," Whaley said. "I would say that contracted acreage is down 20 percent compared to last year. A lot of it is if you look at the global aspect of tobacco industry in 2014 the U.S. and Zimbabwe, particularly, had pretty big tobacco crops in terms of poundage produced.
"So that has had impact on the market on the supply side. Particularly in the U.S. and Europe there is a decrease in cigarette consumption. That has a triggered a response of a reduction in contracted pounds. But the one thing that we still have in our back pocket is that we have -- quality is the competitive advantage that we have over the whole tobacco industry. That helps us. It really helps us."