Several thousand acres of Henderson County farmland are underwater, delaying planting season and causing a financial loss to farmers.
“The season started out pretty good, but by the time we got everything going it started raining,” said Tim Southard, an owner of Southard Farms. “So that’s put a pause on everything. You can’t work in the mud or the water.”
In an interview on April 9, Jonathan Eblen, co-owner of Triple E Farms told the Hendersonian, “If the water goes down right now it would still be two or three weeks until we can get in the bottom ground—if not longer. A little over half of our acreage is bottom land, and the rest is hill country.
“The eight inches of rain we got won’t slow us down too much on the hill country. The sun has been shining and wind blowing … I’d say in a week we could be spraying (for weeds) and moving in the hill areas … We will just have to wait until the bottoms dry out, so we probably won’t get in them until May. “
Both Southard Farms and Triple E Farms raise corn and soybeans.
Southard, who also serves as a Henderson County magistrate, said he farms roughly 3,000 acres in areas located in Corydon, Geneva and the Alzey Bottoms.
Triple E Farms covers approximately 6,000 acres from the Daviess County line to the Union County line.
“All of Geneva Bottoms is covered, and most of Horseshoe Bend is covered. In Reed, you’re looking at 8 to 10 feet of water at the deepest point,” Eblen said.
Planting, the farmers said, generally starts around April 1, but Eblen said he sowed roughly 120 acres of soybeans March 28 on more elevated ground. Unfortunately, the water covered the area, and that crop is a loss, he said.
“That 124 acres was on higher ground, so we tend to plant it before anything, and it’s a gamble,” he said.
While seeds might not go in the ground for a several weeks, both farmers said they will do what they can as quickly as they can to get the earth ready for planting.
Southard hoped to get started spraying for weeds by mid-April.
If weather conditions allow, “we will knock out most of the spraying in a couple of weeks,” he said. “The spraying kills the weeds. Then we come in and put a residual down and that stays in the ground and kills the weeds until the beans come up. Then we spray again and that holds the weeds down until the beans canopy and get tall enough to shade the ground. Weeds won’t grow in the shade so after you spray a few times, that’s all you have to spray. “
Southard and Eblen said once they can get into the fields, it will be dawn-to-dusk shifts until all seeds are in the ground.
“To get 3,000 acres planted takes about six weeks,” Southard said.
“We run as hard as we can when we can run,” Eblen said. “When we take off, we will put in 80-plus hours a week. We work until 10 or 11 at night, go in and get just enough sleep, and then we’re back up around 4 a.m.”
Delayed planting will contribute to a financial loss for the ag community, regardless of the long hours that farmers work.
“A later planting always hurts yield,” Southard said. “It makes weed control a little more challenging, not a lot more, but a little because things get warmer and weeds grow faster. And the yields will be down the later you plant.
“When the soybeans are putting on blooms you want that to be occurring during the longest day of the season which is the first day of the summer. So, every day you miss that, there’s a little yield difference. We’re OK on soybeans. We’d like to be planting now, but we won’t lose a lot of yield there. Corn, by May 15, you will really be dropping bushels if you don’t have it planted.”
It’s hard to put a dollar amount on it, Southard said, but if corn is selling for roughly $4 a bushel, and 10 bushels are lost, then farmers are losing $40 an acre.
“It just all depends,” he said. “And if you had a perfect season and all the rains were just right, you wouldn’t even notice it. It’s all a gamble.”
While the flood has stymied planting season, Eblen said it’s far better than dealing with a drought.
“A drought hits the crop when it needs the most rain,” he said. “Drought usually comes when the plant is making the soybean or making the corn.”
While crop farmers may feel the brunt of flooding damages, Jessica James, agriculture and extension agent with the Henderson County Extension Office, said the entire agricultural community will incur an impact.
“All farmers can be affected from flooding,” James told the Hendersonian. “Depending on the location of the acres that they farm, it will have an impact on the significance of damage caused by flooding. Any field that is covered in standing water—no matter what the field is used for—will suffer. For example, livestock farmers can (experience) loss of pasture ground due to the water. Some livestock farmers have had to move their animals to a different location if they were in a field that flooded.”
Backwaters bringing in parasites and other bacteria, she said, is yet another concern for those with livestock.
Anything that affects the farming community is generating a significant impact to this area, she said.
“Agriculture plays a major role in Henderson County,” James said. “According to the last census, there are 438 farms in the county and 180,679 acres being used for farm ground.
“The census states that cropland makes up 96 percent (of farming acreage) while livestock and poultry comprise 4 percent. Henderson County ranks 5th in the state for overall crop production and 7th for other animals and animal products,” she said.
Southard—who grew up on a farm—said in his opinion, weather patterns have changed throughout the years.
“I don’t have any stats on this, it’s just my gut, but used to, we got slower rains or a good rain is what I call it,” he said. “It seems now we get the same amount of rain, but it comes hard and fast. And that’s not a good rain because it runs off instead of soaking in.
“I believe in cycles, and I think everything is in a cycle. I think we’re just in a wet cycle,” Southard said. “It seems like the last couple of years, April has been really wet. But you go back three or four years, everything was good. I don’t think we’re seeing that drastic of a change.”
Eblen, who also grew up on a farm, said it’s hard to define why a farmer keeps going year after year despite the unknowns.
“I’ve been asked that a million times,” he said. “And I don’t have a great answer. It’s just that farming gets in your blood.”
