Corn rots; cotton washes out

May 13, 2009      The Decatur Daily

Holly Hollman

May 13, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- With cotton production costly and prices low, area farmers have turned to corn the past couple of years.

Then recent rainfall turned those cornstalks yellow and robbed them of nutrients.

"I predict a 30 percent to 50 percent loss of corn that has already been planted," said Charlie Burmester, agronomist with the Tennessee Valley Regional Extension Center in Belle Mina.

"Where it's really wet, the corn has turned yellow where it should have a green tint. The big question is going to be how much extra fertilizer will farmers have to put out on the corn that does survive."

The Limestone County-Morgan County area has received 8.65 inches in May so far, according to the National Weather Service's unofficial records at Pryor Field in Limestone County.

That washed away fertilizer that farmers have put on their corn crops.

Farm Service Agency officials said Limestone County has planted or is about to plant a total of 15,000 acres of corn, and Lawrence County as much as 29,000 acres.

Limestone County Farm Service Agency Executive Director Shane Seay said farmers have invested an average of $300 an acre in corn, and that does not include renting the land.

"One farmer called and said all his corn had rotted," Seay said.

Another issue with the excessive rainfall is that farmers cannot plant some crops that are due for planting, such as beans, late corn and cotton, Lawrence County FSA Executive Director Doyle Dutton said.

The cotton farmers had planted washed away, and it is almost past time to plant more.

Area farm officials were not sure how much cotton farmers had already planted, but the acreage devoted to cotton has dramatically decreased.

Seay said Limestone County had 69,000 cotton acres three years ago. He expects this year's crop to be below 10,000 acres.

Dutton expects Lawrence County's cotton crop to be below 5,000 acres.

"It costs about $450 an acre or better to plant cotton, and with prices low, even with fertilizer being high, corn is a better deal," Dutton said.

Burmester said farmers need to get into their fields to fertilize corn again, but the soggy ground would mire equipment.

Fruit stressed

Wes Isom of Isom's Orchard in Athens said his fruit trees are stressed by the excessive rain but are "holding their own."

On Tuesday, Isom's workers were thinning the peach crop.

"The trees are loaded, and we should have a good crop from them," Isom said. "The weather has caused a little excessive drop on the apples, but we would have had to thin them anyway, so Mother Nature did it for us."

When workers thin the fruit trees, they remove fruit from limbs loaded with peaches and apples.

Isom said the rain has delayed corn planting and has caused wilting in his crops of string beans, okra and peas.

"It's hard to complain about the rain, however, when we've complained about drought for the past few years," he said. "We don't want too much rain, but we get what we get."

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