After suffering through the wettest 12 months since at least 1895, U.S. farmers have plans to adapt next year to what some forecasters said might be an increasingly soggy new normal for the nation's midsection.
The plans include bigger and faster tractors to speed up planting, quick-growing seeds and more extensive use of cover crops and drainage tiles to keep flooding fields intact. But there are problems here too, growers said: The tractors are costly, the short-season seeds have lower yields and cover crops and tiling take time and effort. While farmers have long been locked in a give-and-take tussle with Mother Nature, trends tracked by scientists and forecasters over decades suggest the merciless rains and wild storms that drastically delayed planting times this year could be a weather standard moving forward.
"On a decadal time scale, yeah, you're going to see record after record falling," said Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois in Urbana. "What used to be a one in 100 or one in 500-year event is going to become much, much more common."
The regional rains are part of an "increasing trend over four decades," showing more and more moisture for the region, Wuebbels said.
So farmers are doing what they always do: adapting. "Next year you're going to see guys, when they start, they're going to start and run very hard" to get fields planted as quickly as they can, said Jeff Kirwan, who grows corn and soybeans in Mercer County, Ill.
Other farmers are looking for more ways to convey damaging water away from plants, "terraces and things like that," according to Steve Stierwalt, a farmer in Champaign County, Ill., and president of the Association of Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts. He also plans to get another planter to cut planting time.
"With a really short window to actually get crops into the ground, farmers have been investing into the latest and greatest in terms of high horsepower tractors and planters capable of traveling at faster speed," said Matt Arnold, an agriculture analyst at Edward Jones & Co.
Evan Hultine, a corn grower in Bureau County, Ill., who has switched to the faster-growing seeds, sees more farmers turning to the new planting equipment.
"However, you still have to be able to afford to pay for that equipment," he added. "And really, not every field allows you to utilize that technology."
Tsekova and Sullivan write for Bloomberg News.
