Arkansas farmers didn't plant anything this spring on 1.3 million acres -- fifth-most in the nation -- because of heavy and frequent rainfall and occasional flooding.
Last year, "prevented planting" of insured crops in Arkansas amounted to 187,875 acres.
The national numbers were just as stark: 19.4 million acres not planted this year compared with 2 million in 2018. Most prevented-planting acres were in corn, soybeans and wheat, according to figures released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In Lawrence County, where farmers reported nearly 74,000 idled acres, Jerry Morgan was one of the many farmers still grappling with a wet autumn that delayed harvest last year and spring rains this year that have kept their tractors and spray rigs in their farm shops.
Morgan said his farm, which he runs alongside his son-in-law, had more than 500 acres of corn, rice and soybeans he couldn't plant this year. Another 200 or so acres of rice have failed.
Of the past four years, three crop seasons have been damaged or ruined by heavy rain at planting, during harvest, or both, Morgan said. A good season in 2018 was marred by the ongoing U.S. trade war with China, with a drop in soybean sales and soybean prices.
"This is the hardest year, mentally and physically, that we've ever had. Mentally, because we were trying to decide what to replant, if anything, and the government wasn't telling us what it was going to do," Morgan said, referring to confusion in late spring and early summer when the USDA was slow in deciding that acreage not planted wouldn't be part of the $16 billion second phase of the government's tariff-relief package.
"So we had the stress of the weather and the physical work of finally being able to get into fields with combine ruts left from last fall's harvest," Morgan said. "We'd walk into the house at 11 at night, with an alarm set for 4:30 the next morning. Getting by on five hours of sleep, that's dangerous. And it's stressful, figuring out how you're ever going to make your payments."
Prevented-planting insurance helps pay the bills, but it doesn't bring a farmer to a break-even point, Morgan said.
"It won't make an equipment payment or a land payment," he said. "If you've got debt -- and most farmers do -- it's not going to cover that note. So now we're sitting here with idled acreage."
The USDA began releasing an annual prevented-planting report only in 2007.
But since 2007, the Arkansas high for prevented planting was 708,409 acres in 2015.
"That 2015 number was just knocked out of the ballpark," said H. Scott Stiles, an agriculture economics professor for the University of Arkansas System's Agriculture Division but who is based at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
Farmers in Arkansas, the nation's top rice producer, harvested about 200 million bushels from 1.4 million acres last year but reported 510,000 acres of prevented planting of the grain this year. That amounts to some 84 million bushels.
Prevented planting of corn in Arkansas amounted to 325,000 acres, equal to about half of last year's entire harvest. Farmers also reported the idling of 255,000 acres of wheat and 190,000 acres of soybeans. Cotton and sorghum not planted amounted to another 51,000 acres.
A dollar figure is hard to put on crops not planted, Stiles said, because "there are so many variables" in farmers' insurance policies, if they have them, and how they report.
"But I think you can look at it another way," Stiles said. "And that is, what is the impact of not planting a half-million acres of rice in the state?"
At $5 a bushel, rice not planted amount to about $420 million in lost sales.
Stiles said such losses trickle down to others in a farming community.
"You think of what local suppliers had on hand but never sold, whether it was seed or fertilizer," he said. "Or the commercial applicators and aerial applicators who no longer had fields to spray. All those segments are impacted, too, by big acreage shifts, such as when corn acres wind up being planted to cotton or soybeans that don't have the inputs [expenses] of rice or corn."
Arkansas farmers this year also reported 67,533 acres in "failed" crops, or those that were planted but then wiped out by heavy rainfall or floods.
John Lewis III, senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in North Little Rock, said the prevented-planting acreage in Arkansas and nationally was a "huge number" that reflects weather conditions since December, when rivers remained high from a wet fall.
Not a single part of the state is in a drought, a rarity for August, Lewis noted.
The Arkansas counties reporting the most prevented-planting acreage are in areas of the Delta that have received much more rainfall than usual, Lewis said.
Nearly 109,000 acres in Jackson County, along the White River, went unplanted this year, more than any other county in the state. Jackson County farmers also reported nearly 12,800 acres in failed crops, mainly rice. Phillips County, along the Mississippi River, had 105,151 acres in prevented planting, the USDA said.
From the start of 2019 through the end of July, rainfall in West Memphis was more than 18 inches above normal, Lewis said. Jonesboro, also in the heart of farmland, was 15.16 inches above normal. Pine Bluff was 14.68 inches above normal.
All are in areas affected by the Black, Mississippi, Cache, lower White and Arkansas rivers, Lewis said. "We had heavy rainfall when the rivers were already running high," Lewis said.
In Phillips County, Reed Storey said he and his father had about 950 idled corn acres. He, like Morgan in Lawrence County, had to deal with rutted fields from the fall. "We finally were able to get out to smooth the ruts and get ready to plant, and then the rains would come again," Storey said.
Idle fields are easy to find away from the state's major roadways, said Jarrod Hardke, a UA rice agronomist. "Get off the main roads and interstates, which in general are built higher, and you'll see a lot of empty fields, especially if you're in an area near a river," Hardke said.
Insurance for prevented planting "is a safety net but not a desired one," Hardke said. "It costs a lot of money to maintain fields throughout the season, and whether farmers break even just depends on their coverage."
Because some producers have not completed their filing, the USDA said the acreage in prevented planting and in failed crops will be updated monthly for the rest of the year.
SundayMonday Business on 08/18/2019