Farmers searching for rain clouds
Field irrigation going full blast, but growers say it comes at a cost

BY NANCY COLE
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Persistently dry weather is testing the ability of Arkansas' row-crop farmers to supply their thirsty plants with adequate water.
    At risk are approximately 6 million acres of rice, soybeans, cotton, corn and grain sorghum - crops that in 2004 were worth $2.1 billion. Although most of these crops are grown in fields that can be irrigated, many experts are worried about faltering water supplies.
    Crop yields could be significantly affected if rain doesn't come.
    "I've talked to lots of farmers who say they can't remember it being this dry this early in the year," said Phil Tacker, an engineer with the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service who specializes in irrigation systems.
    Michael Richardson, who farms near Holly Grove in Monroe County, has been working almost nonstop for two months to keep his irrigation equipment running. This year Richardson, chairman of the Arkansas Corn and Grain Sorghum Board, has planted more than 1,300 acres of corn, 600 acres of rice, 600 acres of soybeans and 140 acres of cotton.
    "We're irrigating now just as hard as we can go," he said Tuesday, because no significant rain has fallen on his crops since about April 10. The effect of Richardson's efforts is dramatic - his irrigated corn towers over his head, while his nonirrigated corn doesn't even reach to his knees.
    And things aren't looking up. On Thursday, the National Weather Service released a monthly outlook that calls for Arkansas' lack of rain to persist through September. The report is available on the Web at: www. cpc.noaa.gov.
    The weather service says a high pressure system has settled over the region, keeping out the moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that normally brings much of Arkansas' rain. The conditions are affecting more than just farmers.
    State Forester John Shannon said 99 wildfires burned 817 acres in May.
    "That is approximately double the five-year average," he said.
    Five north Arkansas counties - Independence, Izard, Jackson, Randolph and Sharp - have declared burn bans to keep small fires from getting out of hand. Continued drought could lead to other problems like shortages in some municipal water systems, but that hasn't occurred thus far.
    A report released Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center shows that severe drought conditions have expanded across a wide part of Arkansas, running from the southwest to the northeast corner. The drought center, based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, cooperates with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center and the National Climatic Data Center to synthesize various indexes of drought - such as precipitation, stream flow, soil moisture and vegetation health. Its weekly drought map is posted on the Web at: http://drought. unl.edu/dm.
    On May 17, the center classified southwest Arkansas as experiencing "moderate drought," the least intense of the center's four drought stages.
    In a moderate drought some crops are damaged, water shortages develop and streams, reservoirs and wells are low. As of May 31, northeast Arkansas also was considered in moderate drought. Conditions worsened the next week to "severe drought." In a severe drought crop losses are likely, water shortages are common and water restrictions are imposed.
    Several other areas of the country also are experiencing drought, including western Montana and eastern Idaho, where the level of extreme drought has been reached. The highest level, exceptional drought, hasn't been applied anywhere in the United States, thus far.
    For Arkansas, Thursday's report showed moderate-drought conditions flanking the severedrought zone. Most of the rest of the state is classified as "abnormally dry," a condition in which crop growth slows and water deficits develop.
    Steve Bays, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Little Rock, said May, normally "one of the wettest months of the year, was one of the driest" this year. May was the driest on record in Jonesboro. The city received just 0.22 inches of rain - 4.7 inches below normal - and broke the previous record of 0.45 inches set in 1911. Since May 1, the areas of the state now in severe drought have received roughly 40 percent of normal rainfall, according to the weather service. Newport has had only 0.72 inches of rain since May 1, or 11 percent of the norm. Yearto-date rainfall in southwest Arkansas is nearly 35 percent below normal. Texarkana has had 12.77 inches of precipitation in 2005, just 60 percent of normal.
    The weather service has established a special "Drought in Arkansas" Web page to monitor the situation: www.srh.noaa. gov/lzk.
    The U.S. Geological Survey reports that daily stream flows are less than 10 percent of normal on several of the state's rivers, including the Red, St. Francis and Black. Stream flows of less than 25 percent of normal have been recorded at various locations on the White River.
    Tacker, the Extension Service engineer, said farmers have been forced to use reservoir water much earlier than normal this year, and the reservoirs "are being depleted."
    Several key streams and rivers, such as the Cache and L'Anguille rivers in northeast Arkansas, have fallen to such low levels that they can no longer be used for irrigation, Tacker said.
    "We've been fortunate in that we've been able to develop irrigation systems, but they're all dependent upon the water being there," he said.
    No crop is more dependent upon water than is rice.
    George Dunklin Jr., chairman of the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board, said many rice farmers had to "flush" their fields with irrigation water early this year just to get the young plants to emerge from parched soil.
    Other rice farmers had to flush their fields because they had planted Clearfield rice for redrice control, said Chuck Wilson, an Extension Service rice agronomist. "The herbicide system that goes with that - Newpath herbicide - has to have moisture to be effective," he said.
    Cool nights in April and May delayed rice growth across much of the state, said Dunklin, who farms near DeWitt in Arkansas and Jefferson counties. As a result, many farmers are late in establishing their "floods," which must be maintained on fields until several weeks before harvest. Establishing those floods quickly is important for fertilizer applications to be effective, he said.
    "We're not in danger of losing a crop, but we're in danger of probably not making very much money on a crop," Dunklin said, because of an increased dependence upon irrigation. Farmers are paying about $1.80 a gallon for the diesel fuel that powers many of those systems, compared with about 80 cents a gallon a year ago.
    The drought has been especially hard on soybeans, only about 60 percent of which are planted in fields that can be irrigated.
    John Cooper, chairman of the Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board, said many soybean stands are "spotty" because of the lack of moisture.
    "I used to have a saying in my office a long time ago. It said: 'No stand equals no yield equals no money,'" said Cooper, who farms near Parkin in Cross County. Like many soybean farmers, he has been waiting for rain to finish planting all of the soybeans he had hoped to grow this year.
    Chris Tingle, an Extension Service soybean agronomist, said the soybeans are "really stressed out" and stunted because of the lack of rain. Much of the crop is reaching the flowering, pod-setting and bean-filling stages.
    "We're looking at about a 45- to 50-day window that is really critical as far as our moisture. That's our peak demand for water by the soybean plant," Tingle said. "If things don't start looking up, we're in pretty bad shape."
    Soybeans often are grown in rotation with rice and, when water shortages develop, many farmers choose to flood their rice fields rather than irrigate their soybeans, Tingle said.
    Although about 80 percent of Arkansas' cotton can be irrigated, the crop has been retarded eight to nine days because of the lack of rain, according to Extension Service cotton agronomist Bill Robertson. The plants are beginning to "square," or form flower buds.
    "We can't let it stress for water once it begins to square because of lost yield potential and some impact on fiber quality as well," Robertson said.
    Experts agree that the drought is particularly dangerous for Arkansas' corn crop.
    "Right now we're going into the most critical time for water on corn," said Jason Kelley, an Extension Service wheat and feed grains agronomist. "A lot of the corn in beginning to silk, and it's using probably one-third of an inch of water a day."
    Richardson, the Holly Grove farmer, has one center-pivot irrigation system that extends more than 2,000 feet and waters 350 acres, evenly divided between corn and soybeans. The system provides 1-/4 inches of well water per acre per revolution, and each revolution takes five days. The system uses 125 gallons of diesel fuel per day and has been running nonstop for weeks.
    Although about 80 percent of the state's corn acreage can be irrigated, some water sources are failing. Keith Feather, who grows corn near Griffithville in White County, said he has reservoirs that are depleted because of this year's extra irrigation. They normally run dry in July or August.
    Rob Hogan, an Extension Service economist at the Northeast Research and Extension Center in Keiser in Mississippi County, estimates that it costs about $2.38 per acre to supply 1 inch of water to a field using a furrow irrigation system equipped with 12- to 15-inch-diameter polypipe, or $4.91 per acre to supply that same inch of water with a center-pivot.
    But Hogan is no advocate of irrigation.
    "Irrigation is a poor second choice to what the Lord provides. Rain is much better, if you can get it." Prayer meetings focused on rain already are being held across Mississippi County, he said.

This story was published Friday, June 17, 2005