What started as a normal year for farmers here in the Wiregrass took a drastic turn.

“The heat in August and the drought for about six weeks did it in,” Henry County Extension Coordinator, Jimmy Jones said.

The drought hit the peanut crop hard, with some farmers seeing the worst drought conditions since 1980.

“It was the worst year in history as far as drought and I have some farmers say that this year is worse than 1980,” Jones said.

Farmers could see an average loss of about 400 to 500 lbs of peanuts. This comes out to some farmers losing nearly 14% of the profit they could have earned this year.

Normally, the state averages about 3,600 lbs of peanuts per farmer, but over the past two years, a lot of farmers have failed to reach that average.

“We will make it another year. It’s just really hard coming off a couple of really dry falls like what we had last year and this year, and then planning for what we will have next year,” Jones said.

Jones does say that the peanuts that were planted earlier this season and caught some June rainfall are fairing better than peanuts that were planted later in the season, but it still is not what they want to see from their crop.

Another crop that is seeing an impact of the dry conditions is the last group of cotton that needs to be picked.

Even the early group of cotton that was picked came out to be about 650 to 750 lbs on average, which comes out to a little more than one bail of cotton. However, farmers say they need to be able to pick more.

“We usually need to make two bails of cotton to pay the bills. It’s setting us up for a very drastic situation,” said Jones.

Jones says that rainfall this far into the fall would not help them out, as they are having to pull up what crops they can from the season and prepare for the winter.

A season when some farmers prep their cover crops and in some cases cattle where the farmers have to see if they have enough hay.

However, some farmers say they are short on hay this season.

Source - https://www.wdhn.com