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IN ARKANSAS, HARVEST IS 24/7 AFFAIR

By Mary Hightower/SPECIAL TO THE COMMERCIAL
Friday, November 6, 2009 2:19 AM CST

After a month of watching promising crops succumb to fungus and other ills caused by record rainfall, Arkansas farmers were running combines and pickers full tilt this week to reap what’s left in the fields before the next rain falls.

“As long as the weather holds, guys will be going 24/7,” Jeremy Ross, extension soybean agronomist for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture, said Wednesday. “They were harvesting around my house last night ‘til around 9 p.m.”

The combines are equipped with an array of lights to cut through the rural dark — an eerie sight.

“If they could fly, some might think it was a UFO,” Ross said.

The mud harvest is having another side effect: “There is a rotten ground or sour smell in fields that some describe as ‘hogpen smell’,” said Don Plunkett, Jefferson County extension staff chair for the U of A Division of Agriculture. The smell is due to anaerobic bacteria at work in the soaked soil.

Meanwhile, Gov. Beebe announced Wednesday that USDA is making disaster assistance available to Arkansas farmers in six additional counties: Johnson, Logan, Newton, Ouachita, Scott and Searcy. Eligibility for emergency low-interest loans continues for farmers in 54 other counties.

Ross said that while visiting northeastern Arkansas on Tuesday, he saw lots of combines and pickers in the fields.

“Only saw one stuck in the mud,” he said, adding that several low-lying fields still had standing water in the middle and many of the ditches and rivers were still full.

For all their effort, some growers may see precious little. Cotton growers have seen hard-locked bolls, sprouts in the bolls, boll rot, discoloration and other conditions that, in some cases, have nearly halved their yields to 700 or 800 pounds of lint per acre.

Soybean growers who had great stands in September, are now harvesting beans damaged by fungus, germination, split pods and other problems that will cut deeply into the per-bushel price. In southeastern Arkansas, some growers were lucky to get $3 a bushel when non-discounted prices were running around $10.

One Prairie County grower alone lost 3,000 acres of soybeans, said Brent Griffin, Prairie County extension staff chair for the U of A Division of Agriculture, adding that the grower was able to salvage his rice. Ironically, the grower’s flooded fields are proving a boon to wildlife.

“Ducks are already hitting the fields feeding in an area that has some of the best hunting in Arkansas,” he said. Duck season in Arkansas runs Nov. 21-29, Dec. 10-23, and Dec. 26, 2009-Jan. 31, 2010.

Corn growers, who also had a good-looking crop in September, are faced with plants that have lodged as stalks weakened in the humidity.

One of the saving graces in corn “is that they’re propped up and not laying in the water,” Plunkett said. Another is that some of the ears are bottoms up, allowing the shuck to shed rain like an umbrella, instead of allowing water to pool next to the ear, he said.

Dew can cut into the farmers’ 24/7 harvest ambitions.

“As night comes on the dew begins to settle onto soybean hulls, rice heads and cotton,” Plunkett said. “Once cotton lint gets moist from dew picking has to stop. If soybean or rice gets too moist harvest might stop as well due to higher moisture levels.”

Beyond the harvest, there is anxiety about the future for some farmers.

“Some growers expect to go out of business in this region, based on the heavy damage to their soybean and cotton crops,” Ross said.

Extended hours

With the pickers running long hours and filling trucks, elevators typically offer extended hours during harvest, “but 24/7 service would only be an emergency measure,” said Scott Stiles, extension economist-risk management, for the U of A Division of Agriculture.

Some elevators at Memphis, Tenn., and Helena-West Helena, were keeping long hours too, receiving trucks from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and offering moisture tests of samples until 10 p.m.

“Given the current circumstance, I’m pretty sure most elevators are open on the weekends if weather permits harvest,” Stiles said.

“They will try to accommodate the farmers.”

Farmers are keeping their eyes on the weather and river forecasts.

According to the National Weather Service at North Little Rock, the next chance for rain is Monday.

In Southeastern Arkansas, where many of the state’s waterways drain en route to the Mississippi, farmers faced a longer wait for dry fields.

“It all comes this way,” Plunkett said.

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