By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Record rains that have been a nuisance to most people have meant big losses to local farmers, reports show.
“We have been severely impacted across the crops that are in the field with this rain,” said Gaylon Ambrose, a Beaufort County agricultural extension agent.
Some area farmers are reporting 30- to 50-percent yield losses in cotton, 30-percent losses in soy beans and large, but yet-uncalculated, losses in wheat, Ambrose said.
Beaufort County is among the largest producers of wheat and soy beans in the state, he said.
“The planting intentions for wheat this year were down due to the low price of the wheat, coupled with increased cost of production,” Ambrose stated. “In general, it would take a good crop just to break even under these prices.”
Many farmers who planted wheat in November need to replant because of poor stands, and many couldn’t plant at all because of soaked fields, he said.
“So, we really got hammered on wheat, as well,” Ambrose said.
Much of the trouble started with a tropical-system-turned-nor’easter that had been called Ida.
Ida moved through in early November, dumping 6 to 7 inches of rain over a widespread area — and more in some places, explained Brian Cullen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Newport.
Official records kept at New Bern indicated a new record of 8.6 inches for the month of November, Cullen said.
“The normal value is 3.23” inches for that location, he said. “That’s very significant.”
Ambrose said he measured 9 inches of rain resulting from Ida. The storm was followed up by multiple rain events that kept pounding the region, he noted.
“I’ve just never seen this much water before Christmas,” said Steve Griffin, a farmer located north of Washington.
Griffin said he logged an unofficial reading of 17.5 inches of rain for all of November and December to date.
“It’s destroyed all of our wheat,” he said.
Griffin said he had planted wheat prior to Ida, adding that his fields were waterlogged by 10 inches of rain from the storm.
“What happened there was we had it planted prior to that, and it just drowned everything,” he said.
An additional replanting was soaked by another 4 inches of rain.
“We’ve got 500 acres of parent seed wheat that will not be for seed next year because it’s not going to produce anything,” he said.
Griffin estimates his wheat-related losses could hit $300,000.
He said that, in some years, he’s had to replant perhaps 100 acres of wheat because of weather.
“But nothing like this, where we had 500 acres of wheat, and we replanted it and lost it again,” he added.
On the plus side, “Most of the cotton was harvested” before the heavy rains, Ambrose said.
“I want to say 80 percent of the cotton was harvested in our region,” he stated.
For those with cotton left in the field when the nor’easter hit, “They got hammered pretty good,” he said.
Most producers prepare for tough weather with crop insurance, Ambrose said, adding that yield must drop below a certain level before the insurance kicks in.
“Crop insurance is used as a risk-management tool, not to ensure a profit, but hopefully to avoid devastating loss,” he said.