Drought or rain, which hit Iowa farms hardest?

After 2012's driest growing season in decades, Iowa farmers this year have suffered through the wettest spring in 141 years of records.

Though they would certainly prefer neither drought nor flood, they have their opinions about which is worse, and those opinions, not surprisingly, reflect how local weather conditions have affected their crop production.

For Curt Zingula, who farms in eastern Linn County, “crop prospects are much better this year than last,” when the drought substantially reduced his corn and soybean yields.

With May-June rainfall just 10 percent above normal this year, Zingula said his planting was delayed from 10 days to two weeks, which compares favorably with most Iowa farmers, many of whom were still planting soybeans in July.

Zingula's plant populations, he said, were generally good and required no replanting, which also compares favorably with many Iowa farmers, for whom replanting became an unpleasant and expensive fact of life, if they were even able to plant their crops at all.

Bring back the drought

Unlike Zingula, Grant Kimberley, who farms in central Iowa, said he “would gladly have the drought back again this year.”

Kimberley, who farms with his dad near Maxwell in central Iowa, describes a nightmarish spring in which an estimated 18 inches of rain fell on their fields in April and May.

“We were out of the fields from May 19 through June 8 and had to leave 375 acres fallow,” said Kimberley, director of market development for the Iowa Soybean Association.

Dennis Lindsay, who farms near Masonville, said the 2012 drought and the 2013 deluges have been equally challenging.

“This is the latest we have ever planted,” said Lindsay, who finished replanting soybeans in early July.

Whether those late-planted crops reach maturity, or how they will yield if they do, depends on the weather during the remainder of the growing season, he said.

“What's scaring us is an early frost, which would be devastating,” he said.

With shallow crop roots in often compacted soil, farmers also worry that an abrupt dry spell could further erode 2013 yields.

Farmers said last year's drought was preferable to this year's excessive moisture in at least four ways:

• Soil compaction caused by “mudding in” this year's crops was negligible last year.

• Soil erosion, also negligible in 2012, was painful and costly throughout the state this year, Zingula said.

• Waiting for favorable field work conditions was frustrating and agonizing this year. “With the clock ticking, you just couldn't get anything done,” Lindsay said.

• And with yields sharply reduced throughout the grain belt last year, corn and soybean prices rose to record levels, greatly increasing the value of last year's shortened crop - a phenomenon that has yet to occur this year and may not.

Market response

Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey said he's surprised that grain markets have not responded to what he considers the substantially lowered expectations for 2013 corn and soybean crops.

Noting the $2 per bushel differential between old crop and new crop prices, Northey said, “It's hard to look at what we see here in Iowa and think the market has a good grasp” on the size of the 2013 crop.

Northey, who farms in Dickinson County, said last year was “less bad” for him personally.

“The old saying, ‘rain makes grain,' is true up to a point, but not when your crops are unplanted, drowned out or a foot tall and yellow,” said Northey, who finished planting soybeans July 5.

Though the extent of unplanted acres has yet to be fully documented, they will likely reach record levels in several parts of the state.

In northeast Iowa's Howard County, 44,446 of the county's 252,000 tillable acres had been registered under the “prevented planting” option as of Wednesday, according to Curt Goettsch, manager of the Farm Service Agency in Cresco.

Substantial unplanted acreage also has been recorded in Chickasaw, Floyd, Mitchell and Cerro Gordo counties, he said.

Crops that did get planted were substantially later than normal, with much of Howard County's intended corn acreage switched to soybeans, Goettsch said.

The “prevented planting” option under federal crop insurance is a last resort, said Kimberley, who was forced to leave 375 acres unplanted this year.

The typical payout, he said, would be 60 percent of the crop's insured value, which is typically 80 percent of its actual value.

“So you get paid 60 percent of the 80 percent, which wouldn't cover land rent, machinery expense and fertilizer costs for many farmers,” Kimberley said.

Iowa Soybean Association President Mark Jackson said neither last year's drought nor this year's surfeit of moisture has severely impacted his farming operation near Rose Hill in Mahaska County.

Last year, Jackson said he recorded his highest farmwide soybean yield ever - 62 bushels per acre. This year's crops were planted in timely fashion, with the last of the soybean seed going into the ground on May 27. “Actually I do have 100 percent yield potential for both corn and soybeans,” Jackson said Monday.