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Cool summer weather means fall harvest is behind normalCooler than normal temperatures during the growing season has resulted in slower than normal crop development. What that means to fall harvest is the possibility of some crop losses as normal freeze days occur. In addition, many areas experienced delayed planting and replanting issues during the wet spring, resulting in later than normal crop maturity, according to Dr. Mary Knapp, associate professor of agronomy and state climatologist, at Kansas State University. "The final factor in this slower growing season was an increased number of double cropped acres all over the region, which also resulted in later maturing crops," Knapp said. "The potential for losses here, with a crop that's behind and a normal freeze date, is pretty great," Knapp said. "There are a lot of acres that are vulnerable. Even northwest Kansas, which had a lot of trouble getting their corn crop in the ground, with early rains and hail, has problems now because it wasn't late enough for them to try another crop because of crop insurance regulations." As this story went to press, the nation's corn crop was anywhere from one to four weeks behind five-year averages, according to Dr. Al Dutcher, associate professor of geosciences and Extension state climatologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "In the western Corn Belt all the way east, you not only had a seven to ten-day growth delay, plus also some serious planting delays. In the eastern Corn Belt, that's upward of two to four weeks behind normal," Dutcher said. "Coupling this is the fact that we normally have a lot of harvest activity along the Gulf Coast progressing north. That area has been inundated with tremendous amounts of precipitation in September. That's been keeping farmers out of the field and I see little reversal of that trend." "In the central and northern Corn Belt, when you really get down to it, some of these crops haven't even really matured yet. When and if we have a normal freeze, because of all the rain we are going to have some tremendous harvest delay problems when the crop is ready to come out, simply because of the storm activity and the long-range forecasts for more rain that have begun to emerge." Indeed, below average temperatures were being recorded on the southern High Plains, while temperatures elsewhere were warmer than normal, aiding late summer crop development. Many locations, from the High Plains eastward, received total accumulations of precipitation greater than 200 percent of normal with more rainfall expected, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Some statistics To put things into perspective, producers across the U.S. had harvested 6 percent of the 2009 corn crop by Sept. 27, compared with 8 percent last year and 18 percent for the five-year average. Leaves had dropped on 63 percent of the soybean acreage as of Sept. 27, 2 points behind last year and 14 points behind the five-year average. Although leaf drop was active across much of the growing region, overall progress remained behind normal in all estimating states. Sorghum coloring had advanced to 87 percent complete by the Sept. 27 report, 4 percentage points ahead of last year but 2 points behind the five-year average. Five percent of the sorghum crop matured leaving progress, at 45 percent, 4 points behind last year and 14 points behind the average. Dutcher also said late spring planting is a likely culprit for late harvest. "Right away, the crop was behind the curve compared to normal," Dutcher said. "In most years, this isn't a major deal. You can allow a little play for late maturity." The only problem this season has been consistently colder than normal temperatures throughout the summer. "You go from here on north and all the way east to Illinois and Indiana and you'll see that this has been one of the top ten coldest summers on record." Dutcher said. "The month of July was the coldest. We lost a lot of growing degree days." According to Knapp, a growing degree day for corn ranges from 50 to 86 degrees. "It can't go any higher than 86, because the plant shuts down when it gets too hot," Knapp said. "We weren't getting extremely cold temperatures during the summer. We just didn't see hot enough high temperatures." While it was perfectly good growing weather for corn, Knapp said, it wasn't so good for soybeans and sorghum. "When sorghum hits 55 degrees, it shuts down. Even if you had an 83-degree day, if you had a night at 47 degrees it's not going to do anything," Knapp said. Delays to linger There will be many precipitation events through autumn, Dutcher said, to keep harvest delays around for some time to come. "We've seen four major storm systems break loose from the main flow we normally see and lag into portions of the central and southern Great Plains moving to the northeast," Dutcher said. "As they have moved, they've generated significant rainfall on the central and eastern Corn Belt. If this pattern continues, it's unfortunately going to be a very, very long harvest season." The rain will be followed by colder temperatures, leading to another problem: Wet fields unable to be dried out to bring combines into fields--even if the cold air coming in from the north is drier than the air it replaces. "You're going to be looking at some excessively wet conditions in the field," Dutcher said. "Once it gets colder, it gets harder for fields to dry in a timely fashion. It's not like the summer, where you get a rain--even two to three inches--and you can get back in the fields in two or three days. "Now you're looking at combines and grain bins going through muddy fields. All of a sudden, a two-day delay turns into a five-day delay just to get the top of the field dry to move equipment around in the field." Knapp summed up her thoughts this way: "Getting to Nov. 1 without a frost is going to be really tough for a lot of people." Probably the bottom line argument going around following this cool summer and delayed harvest is that this situation debunks any theory of global warming. Knapp and Dutcher have their opinions. An interesting part of this growing season has been the lack of record temperatures, Knapp said. "We set no record lows around here and not many record highs," Knapp said. "This climate is highly variable. In the 1990s, we were dominated by wet conditions; in this decade, by dry conditions. The question is: are we swinging back to a wet period? The key is adjusting to the changes we see." Dutcher, for his part, said he's neutral on the issue of climate change. "There are some things I'm concerned about, such as the output of atmospheric carbon increases. We've had a couple of years of warm temperatures followed by a couple of years of cooler temperatures. Short-term variations in climate are not a clear signal of global warming. "We are looking at long-term trends, whether or not we see increases or decreases in temperature. Yes, we have been in a steady state the last five years but we are seeing cooler temperatures on the continent." That does not mean, however, that Dutcher thinks there has been a reversal in major trends in upward moving temperature patterns. "What is responsible for that shift we don't know," Dutcher said. "We've seen periods like this before. Short-term variations are probably, for the most part, a normal variation in the climate pattern. Long-term is where we need to be concerned." That concern, Dutcher said, is for the polar regions of the globe, particularly the far north. "When you look at global warming, the northern latitudes have the greatest response," Dutcher said. "We can argue about this affecting what kind of crops we'll plant on the Great Plains years from now or whether we'll see major droughts or wet periods. Certainly, though, the polar areas are the major areas of concern." Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117, or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com.
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