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Sunday, April 20, 1997

Last year, all drought; this year crops are all wet

HOUSTON (AP) - Last year, Texas farmers watched drought shrivel up their crops. This year, too much rain has made it too wet to plow.

In Southeast Texas, frequent rains have tortured farmers, turning their corn, milo, rice and soybean fields into sticky muck covered with weeds. Each time it started to get dry enough to plant, another heavy rain fell.

Rice farmer Jack Wendt of Richmond, in Fort Bend County, says he will be lucky to get much planted before May 1. Any hopes of a second crop are "completely out the window," he said.

Farmers in prime crop-growing areas such as Fort Bend, Wharton, Matagorda and Jackson counties are just starting to plant, a month or two behind schedule.

This lost time translates into lower income, forcing some to turn to lower-profit crops and others to live with one harvest instead of two.

When it gets dry enough, which should be any day now, "every tractor in the county will be rolling," said County Agent Johnnie Cosper in Wharton. Normally corn planting would have begun around the end of February.

From Jan. 1 to this past Thursday, 20.25 inches of rain have fallen at Houston Intercontinental Airport, according to the National Weather Service.

That's nearly double the normal total of 10.8 inches.

One Fort Bend County farmer is said to have measured 35 inches from Jan. 1 through March 31, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Some fields in Fort Bend County are covered by weeds and grass "thicker than hair on a dog's back," said Walter Kelley, who heads the federal Farm Service Agency office in Richmond. "It's rough when you can't even get seed in the ground," he said.

During last year's drought Mark Wendt averaged 45 bushels of corn per acre on his farm at Needville, about half of what is considered a good crop.

This year's average will be zero because Wendt returned his corn seed to the dealer for a refund. The returned seed will be sold to farmers in Tennessee and Kentucky who use similar hybrids.

Even if it rains when needed, late-planted corn doesn't do well in this area because the heat interferes with pollination, said Wendt, who grows corn on one-third of his acreage.

There's also the potential of heat-stressed corn getting infected with aflatoxin, a carcinogenic mold.

And unless there is a remarkably late fall, rice farmers have now lost the opportunity for a second harvest by stimulating regrowth from the stubble left after the first cutting.

This second crop is smaller, but it is more profitable because the costs are lower.

"That is a $4 million to a $6 million hit, just in this county," said Cosper, the Wharton County agent.

As of April 15 only about 1 percent of the rice in Wharton County had been planted compared with 96 percent a year ago.

As of Thursday approximately 4,000 acres of corn had been planted compared with 50,000 to 60,000 acres planted in a normal year in Wharton County. Send a Letter to the Editor about This Story | Start or Join A Discussion about This Story
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