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Heavy summer rainfall causes problems for central Pennsylvania farmers

Lebanon farmers rain damage.jpg

Glenn Zimmerman, Brian Kreider and Philip Stutsman inspecting crops during a Penn State Extension crop inspection tour Aug. 20, 2018. They are looking for signs of mold and disease that is affecting crops after the summer’s heavy rainfall. (Photo: Del Voight)

With 8 to 15 inches of rainfall in Lebanon County in the month of August, local farmers are struggling as their crops succumb to the weather conditions.

“Our watermelon crop was a complete loss,” Daryl Weaver, said. “We had about 1-1/2 acres of watermelons and we were able to harvest about 50 of them. That’s considered a total loss.”

Weaver owns Heritage Acres Farm, a 25-acre vegetable farm at 205 Union Road in Bethel Township.

Some of Weaver’s crops are grown indoors, but even being inside didn’t prevent the heavy summer rainfall from affecting those crops.

“We had 15 inches of rain at the end of July in one weekend and that actually ran inside the tunnel, saturated the soil and killed some of our tomato plants,” Weaver said.

But saturated soil and washed out crops aren’t the primary problem caused by the wet weather.

“Insect pressures weren’t much different than other years, but funguses – we just had a tremendous problem with different funguses on our vegetables,” said Weaver.

Some funguses will affect more than just the fruit and will instead kill the entire plant.

“For our broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower we had four different plantings,” Weaver said. “The first planting, out of 1,800 plants we were able to harvest about 70. The rest had fungus issues.”

While his second planting had a better harvest, he’s not sure how the third planting – which hasn’t been harvested yet – is going to look.

“It has been a tremendous challenge keeping fungal diseases under control,” Weaver said.

Del Voight, senior extension agriculture educator with the Lebanon County office of the Penn State Extension, confirmed that disease is a major concern for crops this year.

“The fact that we’ve had 70 percent more rainfall than normal is incredible,” he said. “Because of the high humidity that comes with that you get a lot more leaf infections and, as of Sept. 19, we’re getting infection into the stalk.”

Corn is susceptible to a number of different pathogens and molds as well as a process called vivipary, according to Voight.

Lebanon farms dealing with rain.jpg

Glenn Zimmerman, Brian Kreider and Philip Stutsman inspecting crops during a Penn State Extension crop inspection tour Aug. 20, 2018. They are looking for signs of mold and disease that is affecting crops after the summer’s heavy rainfall. (Photo: Del Voight)

“That’s a process where the kernels of corn or the soybeans begin to grow prior to harvest,” he said. “That manifests itself by ending up with lower test weights and then you can get more ear molds that come into the ear.”

Test weights affect the amount of money a mill pays per bushel of a particular crop. Low test weights – below 52 pounds for a bushel of corn – could be rejected.

Jeff Bomgardner, owner of a 97-acre row-crop farm in North Annville Township, says his crops have been OK so far but mentioned there could be some problems when he takes them to the mill.

“Our crops don’t look bad, but there are going to be some issues with the tops of corn, which are kind of black and pushed out of the husks, and the bottoms of the corn cob are starting to sprout because they’re holding water,” he said. “I’m sure there are going to be some grain quality issues once we start combining and taking stuff into the mill.”

“Corn at 15.5 percent moisture should be 56 pounds at test weight and soybeans should be 60 pounds at test weight,” Voight said. “Typically, there is a tolerance there so the mills will take a certain amount less than that, but if it is below that weight they’ll reject it and the farmer is stuck with no market for his corn.”

While farmers can dry their crops before going to the mill – or even pay the mill to dry crops for them – that can be costly.

“If you dry down corn – if you take it wet and say it’s 25 percent corn and you dry it down to 15 percent at the mill they’re going to charge you for the drying cost and that can be a significant amount,” Voight said. “Corn is $3.80 per bushel and you’re going from 25 to 15 percent that’s $1.20 in drying costs so now the corn is only valued at $2.60 per bushel.”

In an effort to salvage what they can of their crops and still make money at the mill, many row farmers will be harvesting early this year, according to Voight.

“Things are going to bust at the seams here because farmers are going to try to get this crop out as quickly as possible,” he said.

However, vegetable farmers don’t necessarily have the luxury to choose to harvest early, according to Weaver.

“With vegetables, you can’t harvest before it’s ripe,” he said. “With broccoli, you must have a head there, you can’t just cut the leaves, but we were harvesting the heads smaller in an effort to try to get them before they started developing molds on the heads.”

Vegetable farmers also have to deal with multiple plantings and harvesting throughout the season.

“Row-crop farmers plant in the spring and harvest in the fall whereas we are planting subsequent plantings all season long,” Weaver said. “When we get a wet year like this that affects our planting schedules all season long as well as our harvesting.”

Some farmers, such as Bomgardner and Weaver, have side jobs they rely on to help offset the cost of a bad harvest.

Weaver, who has a background in computer technology, has a winter job he relies on to help pay his bills, and Bomgardner has a crop spraying business on the side.

Other than having side jobs, the only other thing a farmer can do is hope for a better harvest next year, according to Weaver.

“That is the beautiful thing about farming – you can always try again next year,” he said.

This story comes to us through a partnership between WITF and The Lebanon Daily News. 

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