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Summer rain
By Ken Root Craaaaaccck! The midnight thunderstorm emerged from nowhere, as the lightning and thunder announced its arrival. A welcome, yet unnerving sound in the middle of summer, when temperatures are hot and vegetation has almost given up the ghost. I was set to write about the drought and how unfair rainstorms can be, and then suddenly, it rained. Is it a brief reprieve or a change in pattern? Fear of the former, hope for the latter. The year of 2007 is going to be long remembered for how strange the weather pattern has been. Talking with Oklahoma Congressman, Frank Lucas, he said: "No one has ever seen a year like this and no one knows anyone who has seen a year like this." It has been wet where it should be dry and dryer than normal where rain is essential for midsummer crop growth. The best part, for those of us in corn country, is that the extremely dry forecast seems to have been overstated. Overnight, grain prices plunge as the weather premium is dialed out. Rain has an enormous impact on agriculture. No other variable can dictate the yield, profitability, and even the mood of the industry. Rain makes grain, yet rain makes floods, as those in the Plains are realizing this year. Drought and flood have pretty much the same effect. The only hope is that the extremes of nature are not realized too often. Unusual years have lured people into the dry country of the Southwestern Plains. Russell Pierson (long time Oklahoma county agent and broadcaster, now in his mid-90s) said his uncle came to their house in the early 1920s with word that he'd been through New Mexico a few months earlier and "the grass was belly deep on his horse." He convinced his brother to pack up the family and head 600 miles west to farm cheap land and make their fortune. They loaded everything in a wagon and took off, only to find that it did not rain for the next three years. They starved out and arrived back in Oklahoma just ahead of the Depression and the worst decade of weather in recorded history. Undeterred, Russell willed his way through college at Oklahoma A&M and took his first job in the far western part of the state, as the first storms of the Dust Bowl started to roll through. The combined failure of man and nature changed life forever for those who thought they could farm conventionally in a landscape that was good in so many ways, but stingy on water to the point it's absence broke their will, while the economic downturn broke their bank. I hear the rain fall and think how nice it would be if a general front would bring a gentle soaking to the entire area, from the Rockies to the Delta, every week. But it is either too little or too much and we have to accept and appreciate that which we receive. Meteorologists attempt to show their skill in forecasting what will come to pass. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are miserably wrong. They hope you'll forget the call for snow when none came or the failure to predict a deluge of rain. Mike Smith, CEO and Founder of Weatherdata, summed it up best when he said: "I'm in marketing, not production." The rain comes down hard for a short while, with the clock running in my head as to how much that might be. I check the rain gage at first light to great delight as it shows 1.3 inches! The crops relax, the grass softens, the air steams. A disaster has been averted, or at least delayed. One of these events every two weeks and we will produce a crop. Just a normal weather pattern from here to frost and the promise of this year will be realized. But with every shower, farmers think of those who didn't receive it. There is even guilt in God-fearing people who receive rain when their neighbors do not share in its life-restoring bounty. "We were very, very blessed with rain this year," said a 2005 caller from North Central Iowa. Each "very" equaled 5 inches of rain, in the code of the season, where some felt anguish from a short crop and others were able to gain the full potential from their grain and forage. So today, because of the rain, my mood is upbeat and my countenance is beaming. I'll inquire about the rainfall in the region and make sure others know that we were "very fortunate" (that's just over 1 inch) but be careful to sympathize with those who received less. I'll buy gas for the lawn mower and pull the garden hose back into its holder. This afternoon I'll sweat in the humidity, but realize that water wouldn't be running off my forehead if it hadn't fallen from the sky last night. "The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike." (Matt. 5:45). Editor's note: Ken Root is now celebrating his 34th year as an agricultural professional. His career began as a vocational agriculture teacher then turned to agricultural broadcasting and writing as well as environmental consulting and association management. He was the original host of AgriTalk (1994-2001) and now is lead farm broadcaster for WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Date: 7/19/07
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