‘We had rain all summer’: Farm takes a hit from recent wet weather
By Quanecia Fraser
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KENNARD, Nebraska (KETV) — Some farmers say the recent wet weather has been too much for their crops.
In Kennard, Nebraska, the Thomsen family has been farming for four generations now.
The farm has “corn, soybean, alfalfa and (a) cow-calf herd.”
Like many farmers, a lot of their work is impacted — good or bad — by weather.
This past Monday, that weather brought three inches of rain.
For farmers, rain is usually a good thing, but at the family farm, the rain has been more than typical. That’s caused issues, especially for the corn.
“Because we had rain all summer, the plants really never had time to dry off, so it was a great environment for disease pressure. And we do fungicide our corn for disease pressure, but the plants were so lush that that fungicide couldn’t get through the canopy,” Scott Thomsen said. “So even though we did apply fungicide, we still had disease pressure on the lower half of the plant.”
The farm lost about 30-40 bushels of corn per acre.
“Yields are actually below average from what we typically grow on a ten-year average, and we thought they’d be much above average like they were last year,” Thomsen said.
He said bad weather could impact the standability of their corn.
“So, any kind of storm, it would flatten it. And, if we had a bad windstorm, it would make it unharvestable because it’s about the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Thomsen said.
The hope is that the warm weather coming brings a timely harvest that their livelihood depends on.
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