FRANKFORT, Ky. — The corn landscape around Kentucky looks considerably different this year, with plentiful rains and moderate temperatures. The last USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service report of June listed the state’s crop as being 58 percent good, and 24 percent excellent.

That is a far cry from last year’s report for the same time period, when corn was rated as only 33 percent good and 6 percent excellent because of record heat and drought. Chad Lee, a grain crop specialist with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, said there has been much rain throughout the state, which in itself can cause problems – but for the most part the corn is doing well.

“At this point our corn crop is good to excellent and it would be way too soon to make a prediction on what yields are going to be but, even with a lot of corn planted late, we are certainly off to a good start,” he said.

Ray Allan Mackey, president of the Kentucky Corn Grower’s Assoc., said though it was planted later than last year’s corn, this crop is certainly growing now. “The planting season has just gone on and on. It’s been hard to get those last fields planted due to the consistent rains we’ve had, but our corn crop is planted and we still have a few soybeans to plant,” he explained.

Mackey raises 2,000 acres of corn along with 1,800 acres of soybeans in Hardin and Larue counties, just west of the central Bluegrass Region. Even though he planted corn as late as June 8, he said a good follow-through on summer rains will help and he doesn’t have any concerns about yield loss. In fact, the best cornfield he had from last year was planted late.

“It doesn’t overly deter me about planting that late. Corn, given the right summer weather, can complete maturity if planted by then without any problem,” he said. “Every year is different and it depends on what kind of weather we’re handed and how things work out.”

Mackey, like so many of his counterparts, lost half of his corn yield last year to the severe weather conditions, but a year has made a big difference. “We hope, with this crop, from the looks of it and the moisture that we’ve had, it should be a really, really good crop,” he said.

Mackey said a portion of it will pollinate in the next two weeks, something he hopes happens before too much hot weather moves in. If the first few weeks of summer are any indication, the hot weather in the southwestern part of the country won’t make its way here.

The three-month outlook from the National Weather Service indicates an equal chance of normal, above-normal and below-normal temperatures, while above-normal precipitation for the region is expected. With an expected later harvest, Mackey said it may take a little extra drying and handling, but that is part of raising a corn crop.

He also said while things are much better this year, he doesn’t think it will be a record crop. “You have to have population in there in order to make those record-breaking yields, but some of the early cold weather we had and some of the rainy weather took out a little bit of our stand. Still, overall it should be an excellent crop in this area.”

Last year proved to be a perfect season to demonstrate how valuable crop insurance is to a farmer. Since then insurance has just been one of the topics discussed for the federal farm bill. Mackey said it’s important to get a bill passed by the September deadline.

“It’s a must-deal for the rural community to have some stabilization with the farm bill. Crop insurance made all the difference in the world last year. Farmers were able to pay off their loans, go back to the bank and start again for this year thanks to crop insurance payments,” he said.

“We need to get those things in place and we also need to safeguard conservation and emergency programs. Hopefully an agreement will come sometime this summer on the farm bill.

“It takes cooperation to get all of them thinking together, but then yet through the years, as food and nutrition have become a major portion of the farm bill and requires big expenditures to safeguard the health of Americans, as in providing a stable food supply, it’s kind of cumbersome to keep everybody in agreement in how much we’re going to spend on each program,” he added.

Mackey added in a year of tight budgets and facing some decreasing budgets, it becomes even more difficult to get all parties to agree. “I think balancing the budget or trying to keep things in check becomes a priority,” he said.

One huge issue of the farm bill is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and how much of its budget will be cut. The Senate bill called for more than $4 billion in cuts from the program, while a failed House bill was asking for much more.

The issue has some calling for a separation of SNAP from the farm bill altogether. Mackey said with farmers being fewer than 2 percent of the actual population, he thinks it would be difficult to find support for a farm bill in Congress without some of the other programs related to food.