By TIM THORNBERRY
Kentucky Correspondent

CALHOUN, Ky. — The hot, dry summer has turned officially into a drought for a small portion of the state – unfortunately, it is the portion where much of Kentucky’s crops are grown.

The Office of the State Climatologist (OSC) issued a Level 1 Drought Declar-ation on Sept. 2 for 35 counties, most of which are in the western part of the state. According to the OSC, “a Level I drought indicates moderate drought conditions have developed primarily affecting soil moisture and vegetative health.

“Serious impacts to agricultural water needs, wildfire risk and other water-sensitive sectors can be expected in the designated areas.”
The declaration noted “drought conditions have been developing in western Kentucky with precipitation totals of only 50 to 60 percent of normal for several consecutive months. Areas to the east have also developed abnormally dry conditions in pockets, due to the isolated nature of summertime thunderstorms.”

Conditions have deteriorated enough for Gov. Steve Beshear to ask USDA Secre-tary Tom Vilsack for disaster assistance.

“The current drought conditions have critically impacted our agriculture sector,” stated a letter to Vilsack. “Impacts include early harvest of corn, substantially reduced yields of all crops, loss of pasture for grazing and loss of water supplies for livestock.”

The planting season began with ideal conditions, allowing many corn producers to get their crop out early only to be confronted with the worst flooding in more than a decade, early in May. For most of the region, that was the last time a significant amount of rain fell.

Greg Henson is the University of Kentucky (UK) agriculture extension agent in McLean County, and said the drought is the worse he has seen.

“We had a lot of corn planted in April destroyed in the flood and replanted in late May and early June, so we have two distinct crops out there,” he said. “That first crop, if it wasn’t badly damaged by rainfall, some of that is yielding 80 to 90 percent of normal (yields), but there is not a lot of it. The rest of it is down 30 and 40 percent.”

Henson added while producers have yet to get started harvesting the later corn crop, by all indications it will be worse. “On the best ground, it’s going to be 20 to 30 percent off and on the lighter ground, it’s going to be 40 or 50 percent off of what we expect to be normal,” he said. “And it’s pretty much the same thing for soybeans.”

This is bad news, especially for an area coming off a record or near-record year in 2009. The Kentucky office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released updated projections last week verifying the losses anticipated for this year’s corn and soybean crops.

The report noted that corn ”yield was forecast at 135 bushels per acre, down three bushels from the August forecast and well below the 2009 record high yield of 165 bushels per acre.” Soybeans looked to be in the same situation with an estimated yield of 35 bushels per acre, off from the record 48 bushels recorded last year.

Henson said early soybeans in his county look good, but that is misleading. “They set lots of pods and there are lots of seeds in the pods, but somewhere during seed fill when they ran out of water, they quit. We’re seeing seed size as much as half from normal,” he said.

He recalled one farmer in the area who harvested a field of soybeans that should have yielded 45-50 bushels per acre, but only saw 20 bushels.

“We’re guessing that the later the bean crop gets, the fewer pods it set. It may fill out normally, but there will only be one or two seeds in a pod instead of three and four,” he said. “I think the yield loss is going to be just as bad for beans. On the best ground it’s going to be 20 percent, on the worst ground, it’s going to be 40, 50 or 60 percent.”

Henson also said on double crop beans it may be nothing at all. “The only saving grace is we didn’t have a lot of wheat this last year, and there’s not a huge amount of double crop beans here this year, but what we have are as bad as we ever grew. I’m sure we’ll see a few patches that make less than 10 bushels.”

McLean County, which during a normal growing year sees 45,000 acres of corn and 60,000-65,000 acres of soybeans produced, sits almost in the middle of the counties affected by the drought but conditions are spotty, according to Henson. Just to the north in neighboring Henderson County, he has heard reports of near-normal rainfall in areas with good crop conditions.

Those types of reports are few and far between. Henson said he has been on the job there for nearly 30 years and he has never seen drought conditions this bad, including the 1983 drought when weather conditions were similar.

“What we didn’t have in ’83 was the long, long hot spell. We’ve had 40 days in the high 90s or better,” he said.

Henson added the area has seen dry years in the past but without the hot temperatures, crops were much better off in those years.