by SABINA, Ohio (AP) – It was just after dark when Ross Woodruff jumped into a truck to take soybean seeds to his brother, Mark, whose planter had gone missing. It was the first day they could plant after heavy rains two weeks earlier left much of their 9,000 acres too muddy to get equipment into the fields.
With drier conditions, Mark was going hard from mid-afternoon, finishing the beans in one 60 acre field before moving on to another.
“This year, with the weather, it slowed down progress,” Ross Woodruff said. “I wouldn’t say we’re behind but a few more rains and we’re going to be.”
Waiting for the weather is an old story in agriculture, but as climate change spurs an increase in spring rainfall across the Midwest, the usual concern about spring planting fire is expected to rise along with it. In Ohio, for example, farmers have lost about five days of field work in April since 1995, according to Aaron Wilson, the state’s climatologist.
When farmers have to wait for the fields to dry, long planting days can be endurance tests that stretch into the night. Delays in planting can affect yields if they are significant enough, and the quality of crops planted in wet springs can also suffer at harvest.
“This issue is expected to continue to worsen going forward,” said Dennis Todey, director of the Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub. “We need to help agriculture understand that and develop new management mechanisms to deal with that by changing how we plant, changing when we plant, changing what we plant.”
INCREASING SPRING RAINFALL
Experts say one effect of climate change is that warming is pushing more water into the atmosphere, increasing rainfall. Spring rainfall in much of the Midwest has increased by 5% to 15% over the past three decades, according to the federal government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment. That assessment predicts a further increase of 8% to 20% in the region by mid-century.
“The number of days with extremes is increasing. It’s an upward trend,” said Melissa Widhalm, the regional climatologist at the Midwest Regional Climate Center.
The Ohio Valley saw an increase of about a quarter inch per decade in April rainfall between 1980 and 2023, the most of any area in the nation other than the Southeast, according to NOAA. Southern Ohio’s Ohio Valley, northern Kentucky and large parts of Indiana saw some of the biggest increases in April rainfall — up to 5 to 6 inches more than normal in 2024, according to an Associated Press review of four decades. of precipitation data from the University of Idaho.
Farmers will need the ability to manage a wider range of conditions,” said Widhalm.
LESS STRESSFUL DAYS
Farms of all sizes are feeling the pressure to work as much as possible when field conditions allow.
This April, Katy Rogers, who manages the 117-acre Teter Retreat and Organic Farm in Noblesville, Indiana, was planting lettuce seedlings after sunset, long after her staff had left for the day. Like the Woodruffs, she was playing catchup after heavy rains flooded some of her fields weeks earlier. On their small vegetable farm, multiple crops are planted in the spring to harvest in the summer, and other crops are planted in the summer to harvest in the fall.
“When we miss a window and it throws us off schedule, that top might not go out at all,” Rogers said. “We can throw those seedlings out.”
Already this year, she stopped planting sprouts in Brussels because the fields were unworkable during the few weeks needed to plant them, a loss of about $2,800 in revenue. Because of the smaller size of her operation, Rogers can plant by hand when wet fields won’t allow her tractor, but it’s “extremely draining” work, she said.
“It’s really satisfying to come out and be in the rain that feels like it’s hitting you,” Rogers said. She said she hopes to plant more in covered structures and less in fields in the future.
Ross Woodruff, of Ohio, says the good spring days for field work seem to be more intense — coming in two- or three-day spurts rather than the weeklong periods he remembers earlier in his 20 years as a farmer. During those shorter spurts, the hours are long.
“We’ll try to keep things going around the clock if we can, if we have enough manpower,” he said.
Adapting to the rain
More rain means farmers have to manage that water, which can erode soil. A 2018 study by researchers at Purdue University predicted that runoff from spring rains could increase by 40% to 70% in some parts of the state.
Like many large farms, the Woods rely on tile drainage to remove excess water from fields. These tiles are large perforated plastic pipes about 3 feet (1 meter) below the soil that collect and transport water, usually to a canal between fields. It’s an expensive system, but one that pays off in crop yields, Ross Woodruff said.
But there are disadvantages to tile drainage, which results in the removal of moisture from the soil regardless of how much rain has fallen, and there is a risk that fields will be left dry if no summer rains come.
Building soil health is critical for farmers as they adjust to more spring rains.
Wendy Carpenter, who owns the 1 1/2-acre Christopher Farm in Modoc, Indiana, uses several sustainable farming techniques to do just that.
Like many large farms, she covers crops in otherwise bare fields between planting seasons, as well as no-till practices. This keeps organic matter in the soil, helping to maintain structure. Carpenter says her fields can handle excess water as well as retain some of that moisture during periods of extreme dryness.
This spring, she and her team of four were able to plant vegetables outside even after about 7 inches of rain over a week earlier in the month. She says these practices, along with her farm’s small scale and lack of heavy equipment, have allowed her to be a little more resilient compared to the conventional crop farms around her, which haven’t started planting yet.
“When you get those really severe rain events, everybody’s going to be in trouble,” Carpenter said. “Those of us who are actively working to increase our soil organic matter, that’s going to make a difference in who as long as that water is kept.”
And crop diversity, which is a big part of the plan at Teter Farm, helps build resilience. Although Rogers had to forget to plant one crop already this spring, she has many more.
As the Woodruffs tackled planting last month as darkness moved in, Mark and Ross worked quickly to reload the planter, get it done and lined up on the next row. The planter set off, his blades sunk into the ground and the tractor’s headlight had a clear path.
Mark wouldn’t finish the planting until 11 o’clock, and Ross stayed up past midnight doing office work. And they were not alone.
Down the road, another farmer was planting his field under the full moon.
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Associated Press data journalist Mary Katherine Wildeman reported from Hartford, Connecticut.
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