Rain: How Too Much of a Good Thing Can Be Bad
Farmers complain a lot. Having grown up in the midwestern suburbs with Roundup and Lorsban commercials on the local TV channels I was close enough to hear their grumblings but far enough away not to care. As you might expect living on a farm has changed that.
At first the rains were welcome. The area I live in had been under a significant drought until the year I moved in, and of the two too much rain is preferred over too little when you can’t turn on the hose and water 100 acres of corn. In early spring much of the water soaked the earth, rebuilding its moisture content and recharging the ground water that our wells tap.
But it has been raining almost every day now for a week. The ground is saturated. Corn and tobacco seedlings are washing out of their furrows. The land is so muddy that it’s hard to move across it in a tractor without tearing it up. It’s so wet that I can’t even sow a few rows of Silver Queen corn for our dinner table. Evidently I’m not the only one unable to plant. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that farmers are holding back planting because of the rains, boosting the prices of wheat, corn and soybeans.
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