Farmers Take Tractors to Fields, Which are in Need of Rain - 3/11/06

Source from:  roxboro-courier.com 03/13/2006

With this week's ever-warming temperatures, Person County farmers have brought out their tractors and begun working their fields to get ready for this year's crops. Person County Extension Service Director Derek Day said the weather had been so dry thus far this year that farmers decided to "go ahead and get on the land," adding, "We're afraid we might have a wet April and May and not be able to plow then." Day said farmers were currently "getting the land ready" by plowing and applying chemicals. Flue-cured tobacco, which will see a sharp increase in acreage this year, will be planted in fields during the last week of April and the first week of May. Right now, said Day, all the greenhouses in the county are full of tobacco plants to be transplanted and the plants are doing well. The warm weather is also helping farmers cut down on fuel costs in the greenhouses, he said. The past two years saw a decrease in tobacco planted here. In 2003, farmers grew about 3,500 acres of flue-cured leaf. Earlier this year, Day had said he expected growers to at least equal that acreage. He said this week he expects at least a 50 percent jump over last year, and it is possible that farmers could plant twice as much as they did in 2005, bringing acreage back much closer to traditional numbers. Tobacco growers are entering their first full year without federal price supports, and many used their first payment from the tobacco buyout program to pay off debts and retire or switch to other ways of making a living. But many will increase the amount of leaf they grow this year, Day said, with at least seven tobacco companies offering contracts for flue-cured leaf. He said contracts have been offered by the U.S. Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers Cooperative, which operates in Timberlake in the former Crown Crafts building, along with Reynolds American, Alliance One, Universal, Phillip Morris and a couple of smaller companies. As for other agriculture in the county, Day said farmers are busy now top dressing small grain crops and pastures. "If the weather stays like this, in three weeks," Day said on Friday morning —as the thermometer inched toward 70 degrees under partly sunny skies — farmers "may be planting corn." But, the Extension director said, "We need a good rain." The long-term forecast, however, calls for dry conditions through May, he added. Yet, Day quipped, "The weather man is the only person who's wrong 90 percent of the time and still gets paid." In other words, maybe April showers will move in and bring some much-needed moisture to the fields. Enditem