Wettest June pressures crops, livestock

MUNCIE – At least a fourth of the state’s corn and soybean crops are in severe trouble after the wettest June on record with a state average of 8.99 inches.

The wet weather also caused a spike in mosquitoes and other bugs, causing problems for some livestock.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest crop-progress report rates 25 percent of Indiana corn, or 1.425 million acres, as “very poor” or “poor,’ and 26 percent of Indiana soybeans, or 1.482 million acres, as “very poor” or “poor,” says Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University.

The June state precipitation average was 4.80 inches above normal. The month was also the fourth wettest of any month on record in Indiana since 1895, according to the Indiana State Climate Office. Much of East Central Indiana was pounded with 9-12 inches of rain.

Torrential rain didn’t just flatten wheat/hay fields, saturate low-lying corn and soybean fields, and prevent some fields from being planted at all.

It also has kept Hoosier farmers from applying nitrogen and much-needed fungicide on corn and beans, the USDA reports. Similarly, reduced herbicide applications and increased rainfall have made weed control “near impossible.”

The heavy rains as well as high winds, hail, and tornadoes combined to flood streets and homes, destroy roofs, tear down power lines, uproot trees, strand motorists and capsize boats.

On June 20, wind gusts up to 100 mph caused damage along a west-to-east line from Warren to Delaware counties.

The influence of two weather patterns generated an extremely stormy week during June 14-20.

The Bermuda High or Bermuda Block had moved inland from its typical location off the the east Florida cost on June 11.

The high pressure center migrated toward the Smoky Mountains “and pretty much just sits there for a week,” Ken Scheeringa, associate state climatologist, said at a late-June news conference.

“It intensifies and spreads heat and humidity far into the inland,” he said. “In fact, it went all the way through Kentucky. It went that far. It acts like a roadblock, which means any storms that normally go through southern Indiana were blocked. The only choice was to go around this big roadblock, and that path would have been through northern Indiana, so every storm that approached Indiana from the west had to go through that same narrow corridor ... that got hit day after day.”

Then the remnants of Tropical Storm Bill came up from Louisiana and southern Indiana got its turn.

A break in the rainy weather the first week of July reduced some of the ponding and saturated fields and allowed many Indiana farmers to finally apply nitrogen to corn and soybeans, according to USDA.

But the rainy weather returned with a vengeance last week, when many fields that had begun to dry out quickly suffered a relapse of ponding and over-saturation.

According to the Agricultural Weather Information Service, Muncie received 3.95 inches of rainfall last week, while Hartford City got 4.64 inches.

That rainfall delayed wheat harvest, left some of the matured and harvested wheat sprouting, molding and suffering from vomitoxin, put a damper on planting, infected soybean fields with brown stem rot, again kept farmers from applying nitrogen, fungicide and weed killer, and caused a spike in flies, mosquitoes and gnats (a problem for some livestock), according to USDA.

Purdue estimates Indiana corn and soybean losses to this point at $500 million, though about 80 percent of the acres planted are insured.

Hurt says consumer food prices will not increase noticeably because of the crop damage because poor crops in the Eastern Corn Belt are offset by very good crops in the Northwestern Corn Belt.

Prices are likely to be higher on Indiana crops. But so far, grain prices are not high enough to cause livestock farms to begin to reduce herds and flocks, Hurt said.

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.