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Farmers harvesting their crops are well aware of dangerous fire conditions. Nebraska Public Media’s Dale Johnson recently talked about it with Jenny Rees, Extension Educator for the University of Nebraska.
Dale Johnson: No rain in the near future, and I'm hearing that harvest could be done by Halloween. What are you hearing?
Jenny Rees: This has been the fastest harvest that I've seen in a while, other than the fact that we've had pockets of hail in the past, where it's gone fast, too. But it's the first time I remember harvest with no rain, and many farmers have mentioned that. Our extension meteorologist, Eric Hunt, mentioned that September was the driest September on record in Nebraska in 132 years.
Johnson: And this comes off a wet spring, so wet in some cases that farmers had to replant. And that's a whole other conundrum for farmers during harvest time. My son farms corn and beans in Gage and Johnson counties, and we were talking the other day about the awareness that he has with his farming colleagues of the risk to continue harvesting, continue even being in the field when it could possibly start a fire. A corn or bean crop is no good if it goes up in flames. Are dry conditions and the risk of fires part of the conversations that you have with farmers and your colleagues?
Rees: Yes, that's definitely a conversation that's come up on numerous occasions. And our hearts go out to everyone who's been affected by wildfires. We know there were some in the Gage County area. They've been throughout Nebraska, into Wyoming, and even this morning, on another high fire danger day, I had three farmers call me this morning telling me they were parking their equipment and it wasn't worth it. We've had so many field fires and combine fires, even on the non-high fire danger days when the wind is in as strong. Bearings, overheating belts, overheating engines, overheating all this chaff getting in. This happened so quickly, and unfortunately, we already had a death in the area that I served due to fires. I'm hearing from more farmers. They're just shutting down on days like this, because harvest always gets done at some point, and it's just not worth it on days like this.
Johnson: My son tells me of farmers who have a disc hooked up to the tractor, just sitting off to the side in case they see smoke on the horizon.
Rees: Yes, that's the recommendation that we do have, is to have a disc at the field, just in case. We actually have on our crop watch website, which is our crops website for the University of Nebraska, cropwatch.uno.edu, we have a number of fire safety resources for farmers.
Johnson: Do you get a sense that this has the potential, farmers being delayed getting into their fields, to impact the yield?
Rees: Well it already has, from the standpoint that, you know, irrigated corn coming out in many pockets of Nebraska right now are coming out at 10.8-11% moisture. So for perspective, farmers want to sell their grain around 15.5% is the standard. So in that 15-16% range, I've never seen corn this dry coming out of the field, and when the farmers aren't selling that extra water in the grain, it causes a reduction in the yield, and then ultimately that payment that they're getting. That is a hard thing. We had farmers trying to find any fields where they still had good moisture so that they could get after it early. But it's unfortunately been what's been happening in these cornfields. Soybean fields, we've been having moistures as low as 6% which, again, you think about a standard moisture at 13% for soybeans, that's losing over five bushels for those farmers. So yes, it definitely impacts yields.
Johnson: Jenny, you be safe. Thank you very much. Jenny Rees is an extension educator for the University of Nebraska, joining me on Nebraska Public Media. I'm Dale Johnson.