A very hot and dry week in Kansas has wreaked havoc on Jon Kerschen’s soybeans.

"Where we're at now you can tell, I mean, the leaves are brown. We're down to the plants dying and none of the pods have much of a bean in them at all,“ Kerschen.

Down the road from his Garden Plain farm, his corn isn’t looking much better.

“We had just enough moisture to really promote growth but then we got heat and dryness at the key wrong times," he said.

Kerschen is one of many Kansas farmers who are facing a tough fall crop harvest.

K-State Ag Extension Agent Jeff Seiler says the state's drought has left very little soil moisture to help crops fight off the heat.

He says before the heat wave in most of Sedgwick County, "the corn was looking fantastic but we always had that cautious optimism that, you know, if this shuts off, and we get hot, we don't have enough moisture down in the reserve to stay up."

This will make for the third straight weak harvest for many farmers in Kansas due to the drought. It was a historically bad wheat crop for some earlier this year.

K-State Agriculture Economist Daniel O’Brien says most farmers can handle one or two bad harvests with the help of crop insurance but bad harvests keep coming.

“It probably will make all that much more pressure on next year to hit, to not have a shortfall,” he said.

He says we’re not at a point statewide where farmers are going to have to sell land but conditions need to improve for it to stay that way.

Kerschen says that while having these harvests fail is bad for his bottom line, it hurts more than financially. 

“Even just your morale and so to see failed crop after failed crop it's tough. It's tough to watch these plants. You put everything into it and watch him dry up and die on you,“ he said.

Source - https://www.kake.com