If you think the weather has been especially bad in the Midwest this year, you’re not wrong. Spring saw some of the worst tornado seasons in the past ten years with over 300 hitting ground in a two-month span. The skies have opened nearly every day, dumping water on small towns and farms all over the US.
The consequences? Satellite footage taken this year shows that the normally deep green farming belt of the US is a stark brown, from months of flooding and extreme weather. This could be a real issue for farmers, who are planting late or not at all, and for consumers when they go to buy these products in the fall.
Farmers are being forced to plant corn and soybean in late June and early July when normally the plants would have been in the ground for weeks. When they are planting, most farms aren’t seeing ideal conditions – if the option is to plant nothing, or plant in a too-wet field, farmers are choosing to plant anyway and try to get something from their harvest this fall.
The accepted cut off date for planting soybean is July 4th. This is considered the absolute latest to plant soybean, so farmers are fast running out of time. It’s expected that many farms will forgo planting altogether in the worst spots or only get a portion of their fields done.
In the middle of May, Reuters reported that only about 30% of US cornfields were planted. The normal average at that time is 66%, so less than half of farms had followed their normal schedule. This is directly because of the extreme weather, no other outside forces are changing it.
The fact that not all soybean is in the ground is also very concerning because soybean is often the ‘backup crop. If you can’t get corn in the ground soon enough, you swap to soybean. However, this year farmers have seen a huge drop in the export price of the product. Couple that with the ground being too wet to plant anyway, and farmers have a big problem.
This isn’t expected to improve as the summer goes on.
If farmers see the absolute ideal conditions from this point going forward, some larger farms may be able to salvage their harvesting season. But meteorologists have already predicted July to be colder and wetter than normal, meaning that these ‘unicorn’ conditions for planting and growing probably won’t be seen through much of the US.
The past few years haven’t been ideal for farmers, but they haven’t been this bad. It’s possible that if harvests in fall are not good, thousands of farmers will lose their farms. Even if it turns around from here on, the effects of this planting season and weather issues will be felt for years as farmers recoup their losses.
