Heavy Rains Virtually Ruin Tobacco Crop

Source from:  Local 12 Cincinnati 08/07/2009

All of our recent rains mean the upcoming harvest season could be a bleak one for area farmers. While soybeans and corn can tolerate increased moisture to some degree, Local 12's Rich Jaffe says one particular cash crop is already in big trouble. Tuesday's torrential rains tore through the hills of Adams County in the form of flash floods. Sections of State Route 41 were closed due to high water. The debris and rock left behind by the raging water is everywhere. Flood waters came right up to the edge of Chuck Burkhardts farm house. "It come up so quick it looked like waterfalls coming off the barns and stuff it was coming off so quick… ten minutes at most it come out of the creek bed. It was all over the place, all the roads was shut down and everything." To give you a sense of just how much waters been moving through this area, this stream which is normally just a trickle yesterday was so high it was slamming against these timbers and then surging over the handrails. The water has claimed another victim too… Southwest Ohio's Tobacco crop. Kenny Ring had 35 acres of tobacco… 15 to 20 acres are now rotting in the fields. "Looking at maybe 50 percent loss or better, which I don't need, but Mother Nature dumped ten inches of rain in two weeks and now we've got sunshine, we get sunshine I'll lose more, just the way it is in the tobacco crop." "These plants just have too much water, the roots can't get enough air, the water's sealing it off, the plant can't breathe basically and all that moisture's just causing it to drown." Dugan says many farmers have lost as much as two third to one hundred percent of their crop. Once one of this area's biggest cash crops, for this year anyway… tobacco's become an agricultural tragedy, a victim of Mother Nature. Dave Dugan tells us that while the corn and soybean crops can indeed handle more water than the tobacco can, farmers are still expecting a reduced yield from both of those crops as well come harvest time. Enditem