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Missouri Bootheel farmer replanting some crops due to dry conditions

A farmer in the Missouri Bootheel says while farmers in some parts of Missouri are replanting due to excessively wet fields, the farmers in his area are replanting due to the excessively dry conditions.

Aaron Porter, who raises cotton, corn and soybeans in Stoddard County, tells Brownfield the recent rains have been scattered.

“There were some streaky showers that came through. If you were under them, you got a nice shower. The rains dissipated as they approached,” he says. “We have several acres of soybeans and cotton planted into dry dirt that are yet to come up. Probably in the next week, we’ll be switching from planting cotton and replacing that with bean acres.”

Porter says he stopped planting cotton last week due to a lack of soil moisture.

“Cotton’s planted so shallow. It doesn’t take a whole lot of moisture for cotton to germinate, but if cotton does happen to germinate in that top half to three quarters of an inch and there’s no soil moisture, subsoil moisture below that, it can really cause problems that the plant will germinate and then potentially die. That’s kind of where we’re at right now.”

He says weather forecasts have repeatedly shown rain chances that disappear, and Porter is concerned about crop establishment transitioning into what’s typically a drier part of the growing season.