Mid-Missouri’s wet conditions are putting farmers in a time crunch

Farmers around mid-Missouri have felt the effects of the heavy amount of rain in the area this spring.

The amount of water the area has seen, along with flooding, has caused some to be behind on planting crops.

Terry Hilgedick farms on a couple thousand acres in Hartsburg with two other men.

He said they have adapted to wet conditions.

“We’ve learned how to cope with it, adapt to it, and put in contingency plans for what we do next in event of high water and how we approach the year with high water,” he said.

Their land is largely affected by the condition of the Missouri River. Hilgedick has several fields that partially or almost entirely covered with water.

“We just work where we can. We do the best we can with what we have to work with. And right now there isn’t a whole lot of land that will plant in the river bottom,” he said.

He also said the rain is affecting other whose land does not sit in low areas.

“To be honest the folks that are outside the river bottom that farm from the uplands, they haven’t fared much better,” he said.

He said the crops those farmers have planted may need to be replanted because of all of the rain.

Flooding from the river has not allowed Hilgedick to plant in many places.

“Our hope is that it will go down and that we can resume planting in a couple of weeks. That’s the very best case scenario that I see for us here,” he said.

Hilgedick said these wet conditions can ultimately have an effect on prices for consumers. But he said there a large enough abundance of things like soybeans and corn that it would take a larger portion of the country facing the same conditions to see a major jump.

“But you know, there are eight billion people in the world and every one of us wakes up hungry every day. So we have a responsibility to try to fee eight billion people. And that’s our intention, but we can’t do it in these sorts of conditions,” he said.

He said right now their main concern is getting everything planted in time.

“We can plant soybeans until the end of June and have pretty decent success with that, but that’s not that far off when you figure you’ve got a lot to get done,” he said.

Brian Berwanger farms with his father in Boonville, Missouri.

They recently made a change to organic farming. This is their third year growing organic crops.

They sell their crop to an organic livestock feed store in Buffalo, Missouri.

So far this year they have gotten one conventional corn crop planted.

“The rain may negatively affect that because it has been cold and wet, so the corn might rot in the ground. We’ll have to keep an eye on that to determine if we need to replant,” he said.

The rain has also affected their organic crops.

“Typically we’d like to get corn in mid-April to mid-May, but because it’s been so wet we’re waiting for our fields to dry out prior to working them again,” Berwanger said.

He said the rain has pushed all of their work to one, short time period.

“Usually we’ll get our corn crop in, we’ll have ample time to then start planting soybeans. But now we’ll have such a time crunch that we’ll probably want to plant everything simultaneously,” he said. “And on top of the corn and soybeans we’ll also start cutting hay shortly there after as well.”

He said they will also have sheep that they will be lambing around the same time.

“So because of the rain everything will be crunched into about a month’s time frame,” he said.

He said he and his father are taking advantage of the downtime to get their equipment ready for when it stops raining.

Berwanger also said other areas of the country typically produce enough to keep prices down on conventional crops.

“I think that organic prices are a little bit more steady than conventional, as far as I know,” Berwanger said.

The rain has had an effect on certain animals, as well, such as honey bees.

Jacques Laboile is a bee farmer in Columbia at Bonne Femme Honey Farm.

He said the rain keep the bees from flying to collect pollen. He did not see a bee in sight on his farm Sunday morning, between the wet conditions and the cool temperature.

He said the bees primarily collect honey between April and September, so the rain from these past week could have an effect on their production.

“It’s a delicate balance,” Laboile said.

He said, unfortunately, there is not much he can do when it rains other than move their hives to an area with plenty of bountiful plants and trees.

Much like crop farmers, he can not do much more than wait for the rain to stop.