Farms, crops soaked by recent rains

Last week's torrential rainfalls have caused damage and delays to some Virginia farm crops, but the extent of losses is unknown, some agriculture experts said Monday.

Several crops that were recently planted or still in the fields were hurt by the widespread, three-day deluge, including winter wheat, barley and soybeans, said Molly Payne Pugh, executive director of the Virginia Grain Producers Association.

"There is definitely going to be damage," Pugh said. "I don't have a good feel for how much yet. Right now, we are assessing."

Pugh said she and her husband planted about 400 acres of red winter wheat on their farm in Tidewater.

After last week's storm, "we know for sure that we won't see at least 100 acres of that," she said.

Soggy ground conditions could prevent farmers from replanting any lost winter wheat in time to make a good crop. Winter wheat produced about $135 million in cash receipts for Virginia farmers in 2008.

The state's soybean and cotton crops also are a concern now because the rain further delayed an already late harvest.

Soybeans, a $134 million crop for Virginia farmers in 2008, generally have had a good year in 2009, with yields estimated at around 37 bushels per acre, higher than the 32 to 33 bushels-per-acre trend of recent years, said Wade Thomason, an extension grains specialist at Virginia Tech.

But wet weather during the spring planting season made the crop late, and more delays will reduce yields.

"It is going to be somewhat region-specific," Thomason said, depending on how much rain particular farms got and when farmers can get back to harvesting.

Several experts estimated that about 60 percent of the state's cotton crop has been harvested. Cotton that is still in the fields has suffered in the deluge.

"It's primarily because the rain and the wind has caused the lint to fall off the plant," said David Holshouser, an extension agronomist at the Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Suffolk. "The amount will vary depending on where you are and what field you are in."

Cotton produced about $36 million in cash receipts for Virginia farmers in 2008.

While the rains have caused some damage this year, "if the weather turns good and [farmers] can get back into their fields, they can still finish up with a good crop," said Spencer Neale Jr., a Virginia Farm Bureau commodity marketing specialist and secretary for the Virginia Cotton Growers Association.

The corn crop, worth about $153 million in cash receipts to Virginia farmers in 2008, already has been largely harvested, though some remaining fields may have suffered wind damage, experts said.

Corn prices rose Monday on the Chicago Board of Trade to the highest in almost five months as rainfall disrupted the U.S. harvest, threatening to curb output and erode the quality of some grain, Bloomberg News reported.

Virginia's peanut crop has been harvested and looked good, with yields estimated at an excellent 3,600 pounds per acre, said Dell Cotton, director of the Virginia Peanut Growers Association. Many peanut farmers also grow soybeans and cotton.

Virginia's tobacco crops have been harvested, said Stan Duffer, regional market manager for the Virginia Department of Agriculture.

"We had a very good crop [of tobacco], with good yields," he said. "It was a good year as far as weather was concerned. We did not have to irrigate as much as normal."