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| Some farmers dig deep to ensure healthy crops |
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Posted: Wednesday, July 18, 2012 8:56 pm
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By KEVIN BOWDEN
Staff Reporter
Jim Thorpe of Union City has been farming all his life, and he can only recall a drought in the early 1980s being as bad as the one farmers are dealing with this summer. Luckily, some of his corn crop has been saved by irrigation.
Thorpe said he has already harvested what he called a “good wheat crop,” but now he is facing a dismal corn crop that’s been severely damaged by this summer’s hot and dry weather.
Thorpe has about 1,400 acres planted in corn around the county. About 425 of those acres are irrigated using giant watering systems and pivots, which provide vital water for the corn.
To put the difference in perspective, Thorpe said he will harvest about 200 bushels an acre from his fields that have been irrigated while only harvesting about 20 bushels an acre from non-irrigated fields. With corn prices about $7 a bushel, it’s a costly difference for Thorpe.
“There’s no comparison,” Thorpe said as he surveyed some of his fields north of Union City Friday morning.
He said this year’s corn crop is “one of the worst” he’s seen since the disastrous crop produced in the early 1980s.
It was about 19 years ago Thorpe bought his first irrigation system, a diesel-powered unit that could irrigate about 160 acres of farmland. Today, Thorpe has four irrigation units that have cost him about $350,000.
It’s an investment he certainly doesn’t regret and, in fact, he wishes he had more irrigation units.
“I wish I had everything under pivot,” Thorpe said.
He explained an irrigation system can actually pay for itself in a year.
Now, Thorpe is facing a harvest of only a fraction of his corn crop.
He has already planted about 2,000 acres of soybeans and he is hoping that harvest will be more productive this fall.
Thorpe is among the fortunate local farmers who wisely invested in an irrigation program for their crops and he believes it has made all the difference in his corn crop.
Local farmer Mike Hampton is also a firm believer in irrigation systems.
He has been farming full-time since 1974 and agrees with Thorpe that this has been one of the most devastating seasons for corn since the early 1980s.
Hampton has five irrigation units that cover about 700 acres of his corn fields. He has a total of about 2,400 acres planted in corn this season, and the harvest is not looking good. He farms a total of about 4,000 acres.
Hampton said he will be lucky to harvest about 50 percent of his potential corn crop from fields that have not been irrigated.
“So far, under the pivots, it looks good to me,” he said last week.
Hampton said he hopes to harvest 200 bushels an acre from his irrigated fields.
“This situation — the drought — is impacting our corn prices,” Hampton said.
This year’s corn crop is bringing about $7 a bushel, compared to a normal year when it would bring about $4 a bushel, according to Hampton.
For Thorpe and Hampton, the impact of this year’s corn crop reaches far beyond this year.
“It’s affected us badly enough, our cash flow situation has been hurt enough that it’ll affect us going into 2013,” Hampton said.
He explained he will take a long, hard look at the number of acres he will plant in corn next year. One of the issues he and other farmers will face next season will be the availability and cost of seed.
This summer’s severe drought has been good for business at Inco Ag Irrigation Services, where Jason Craig and others on the staff there have been busy working with area farmers.
Inco Ag is an authorized dealer of Reinke irrigation systems. So far this year, the local company has sold about 10 irrigation units for farmers across the county and are working on quotes for almost 50 systems. In addition, Inco’s staff of eight full-time installers has set up more than 50 irrigation systems for farmers around the country so far this year.
The market area for the local Inco dealership covers all of West Tennessee and western Kentucky, according to Chuck Doss, who along with Richie Cash, owns the local Inco dealership.
Doss said next month’s Obion County Fair will feature one of his irrigation systems as well as a booth demonstrating how Inco’s pivots work.
“There has been a tremendous surge in farm irrigation over the past few years,” Obion County University of Tennessee Extension office director Tim Smith said.
“I do not know the exact number, however I would suspect that Obion County has had a minimum of 40 plus systems placed in just the last two years alone. Some farmers have put as many as three or four systems each,” he said.
“Valley and Reinke are the two predominant irrigation systems that you will find in Obion County,” Smith said. “Generally speaking, most folks will tell you they cost about $1,000 per acre to put in. But, this fluctuates considerably dependent upon the number of acres under pivot, the power source, cost of the well, land topography and other cost influencing factors.
“In Obion County, we have pivots that cover as little as 50 acres all the way up to over 200 acres each. So, the cost of each system can vary greatly.”
Staff Reporter Kevin Bowden may be contacted by email at kmbowden@ucmessenger.com. Published in The Messenger 7.18.12 |
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