If you live in the Midwest, you may have noticed that it’s been raining an awful lot this summer. Typically, we hear more complaints from farmers about not enough rain while obsessively checking the radar and tracking any green speck that may be moving into the region. While drought can be devastating, too much rain can be just as bad. It seems wrong to be complaining about the constant rain and pumping excess water out of basements and wells while California and much of the West is gripped with drought, but it’s our reality.
Living in the city, the biggest complaint I have following a storm (or week-long series of rain showers) is flooding. Pavement doesn’t exactly absorb water, so it’s diverted into storm drains. Too much rain too quickly combined with litter blocking the storm drains can lead to flooded streets, inconveniencing drivers. Horror stories about broken water mains and sewer issues causing water to back up into basements or resulting in sinking streets and yards seem to be on the news nearly every night lately.
There’s significantly less pavement in rural America, but that doesn’t mean flooding isn’t an issue. Soil can only hold so much water, so ditches, creeks and streams are all filling up much more quickly after it rains because the ground simply cannot take any more moisture. Fields, basements and roads are all flooding. Newly-planted crops are either washed away or severely compromised after spending time underwater. Plants fight waterlogged soil as they try to establish root systems to obtain nutrients required for growth.
Fields that aren’t washed out face a host of problems, such as:
- increased risk of disease
- increased weed and insect pressure because farmers can’t get into their fields to control the pests
- nutrient deficiencies because the nutrients couldn’t be applied due to the wet weather, aren’t available to the plant because of the excess moisture, or because root systems are compromised by the wet soil and aren’t able to pull as many nutrients as the plant demands
This is a wider view of the washed out soybean field. The plants in the center of the photo are all weeds. If you look closely, you can even see lines in the field, which were made by the planter. This field was probably more wet than is ideal when planted, which is why the cuts in the ground didn’t close right away.
- soil compaction caused by heavy equipment moving through wet fields
- waterways blocked by organic matter (things like last year’s corn stalks) that could cause flooding if it keeps raining
- stunted growth and yield loss due to late planting or re-planting, small root systems, lack of sunshine (rain usually means cool, cloudy days), and the aforementioned issues with nutrient deficiencies and insects, weeds and diseases
- harvest delays because of the lack of heat and slower crop growth
Farming is all about balance of uncontrollable factors. Farmers may be wishing for rain one day and be praying for it to stop a few days later. Their livelihood depends on Mother Nature, and an entire season can be taken away in a matter of minutes. There’s nothing that anyone can do about it, so farmers just adapt and do what they can this year before starting fresh next spring.
