By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

FRANKFORT, Ky. — “The show must go on” – and Kentucky farmers are living up to that despite the flooding that took place in early May.

Even so, certain areas in the state may take months or even years to get back to normal. Greg Henson, the University of Kentucky (UK) extension agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources in McLean County, said some bottomland there still has water on it.

“We had about 50,000 acres of flooded land and about half of that was planted in corn. Probably 15,000 to 18,000 of those are destroyed and most of the rest has some damage that might be salvageable,” he said.

“The way it is working out, it didn’t occur in whole fields but I don’t think much will be salvaged because what’s left that could work is in small chunks.”

While damage estimates across the state as a whole are proving to be less than originally thought, McLean County – which lies in the Green River basin – took a major hit with an estimated 40 percent or more of the corn crop lost, according to Henson.

“We grow between 40,000 and 50,000 acres typically and probably closer to that 50,000 this time because we had such a great April, and most of the corn planting was done the day it started raining,” he said.

Adding insult to injury, some of the corn out of the floodplain was damaged as well because of the intensity of the rains. “We got as bad of an erosion event as I’ve seen in a long time and some of that will have to be touched up or replanted,” he said.

The next quandary, noted Henson, is whether there will be much of a yield loss with any of the replanted corn.

“The crop insurance people are trying to see if they can position folks so they don’t have to replant after June 1 if their situation is where they don’t need to be, and on a lot of this poorly drained ground, they really don’t need to be planting corn that late,” he said. “If we can get this crop insurance thing straightened out, a lot of that ground will go back to beans and that would be a pretty timely crop of beans.”

While soybeans may get the nod on some of those acres, Henson pointed out that last year most of the corn there was planted in June, producing one of the best crops ever. “Mother Nature has no mercy,” he said.

In a county that has traditionally raised more soybeans than corn, the two crops have grown closer in number of planted acres over the last few years. But Henson doesn’t see a big upswing toward beans this year, depending on the crop insurance issue and if certain herbicides had already been applied. Either way, producers will have obstacles to climb.

Henson added some of the land in the county probably won’t dry out until August. “We actually have a lot of land in the Pond River basin in McLean, Hopkins and Muhlenberg counties that still has water on it,” he said.

In nearly 30 years on the job, Henson said he has seen worse floods, but this time things were different.

“We’ve had spring backwaters four or five times since I’ve been here and a couple of them went higher on bigger corn. This one was so unusual at this point because April was the best crop planting month I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Most farmers that I talked to during April, after they pulled out of the fields, said ‘Well, I’ve finished planting corn, now all we need is a May backwater,’ and then we’d laughed about it. About two weeks later, we weren’t laughing anymore.”

While producers in McLean County wait for fields to dry, those in other parts of the state are dealing with similar issues even though the water levels have dropped. Bernard Peterson of Peterson Farms in Nelson, Marion and Larue counties had his share of rain and is still waiting to see just how much damage was done.

“We had wheat that was underwater for about three days. Some of it didn’t get hurt too badly but we really don’t know yet. The wheat that was under for any length of time, of course, is a total loss,” he said.

If there is a bright side, that loss will only equal about 10 percent of Peterson’s total wheat crop. At the time the rains began, he had planted about 2,200 acres of corn, which was affected as much from the intensity of the rain as the flooding itself.

“We had to go in and spot-treat the fields. We’ve lost corn but we’ve replanted it or are about to get it replanted,” he said.
Peterson estimates the loss amounted to approximately 20 percent of the crop. He also said they were fortunate because the lowest of his ground that was underwater the longest had not been planted at the time of the flood, and he had also not planted any soybeans at the time.

“We were getting ready to start and they forecasted that big rain, so we made the decision to wait, and that was a good move,” he said. Peterson added it was fair to say they had dodged a bullet.