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Delta farmers wait for better weather

Farmers in northeast Arkansas are waiting on a decent planting window following a month of record rain and flooding.

“I never ever say I want the rain to stop, but I wish it would pause or slow down a little bit so we could get some fieldwork done, crops planted and crops emerged,” says Tommy Young from Jackson County.

Young says every three to four days another rain keeps farmers out of the fields. But when the rain stops…

“Our plan is to plant a tremendous amount of soybeans in a short period of time.”

Young planted some corn and rice ahead of the rains that have done ok, but he held off planting soybeans. He says he’s glad he waited, because of record rains and flooding that came in early April. But Young says others aren’t as fortunate.

“To the east of me, there’s probably thousands of acres there that are still underwater today or are partially underwater that makes it where it’s difficult to plant a field when the field isn’t dry or out from under water.”

Kenny Clark farms along the Cache River in Jackson County.

“This is the deepest water I’ve ever seen in my life,” Clark says. “We had four to five feet of water across our farm.”

Clark says he didn’t plant several thousand acres of crops and probably won’t this year, because levees must be fixed and the planting timing isn’t right.

“We ran out of time to plant and be covered for insurance. We can’t take the chance, especially with low crop prices and high input costs.”

He will prevent plant corn and rice. Jesse Flye from Craighead County says he’ll also take some prevent plant for the corn, but will try to replant rice and soybeans lost in the flood.

“We had about 3,000 acres of soybeans planted and we lost about half of that,” he says. “Our rice crop, we had about 1,800 acres in the ground and it looks like we’re only going to have to replant 160 acres.”

He says it’s not just the excessive rains and flooding that’s hurt the crops; a recent hailstorm has damaged cotton, but Flye tells Brownfield…

“We’ve got to keep our head down, work hard and try to do what we can, letting Mother Nature chill out a minute.”

Ag meteorologist Drew Lerner says there will be a short window of dry, warm conditions in the Delta midweek, but it will be followed by more rain.

Photo: A wet soybean field that could be replanted on Jesse Frye’s farm in northeast Arkansas.