US: rains after dry spell give farmers a break; most crop yields good

For New Jersey farmers, it's been a year of rainfall extremes, with the driest March on record, below-normal rains in May and August and deluges in June and July. This weekend's rain spared the Garden State from what would have been the driest, hottest August ever recorded and saved crops starting to dry up.

"It's kind of a roller coaster situation, and we were very fortunate to have the rain this weekend," particularly the farmers who don't irrigate, Peter Furey, executive director of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, said Monday. "There was a lot of anxiety out there last week."

The showers gave vegetable and fruit growers, who generally do irrigate, a break from the extra work and expense, and the hot, dry stretch starting in late July helped make peaches, melons and other sugary crops that do well in the heat especially sweet and tasty.

That's the case at Terhune Orchards in Lawrence Township. "It's actually one of the best peach crops we've had in a while, and the apples have been pretty good," said farmer Gary Mount. He had to substitute quicker-maturing sweet corn varieties because June rains kept him out of his fields periodically, but said otherwise it's been a fairly good year - surprising many farmers who expected disaster, given the weather.

Still, plenty had to replant after the June and July downpours damaged crops, Furey said. More than half of New Jersey's 600,000 acres of farmland - generally big spreads planted with "field crops" such as hay, soybeans and corn for livestock - aren't irrigated because low prices for those commodities make irrigation financially unfeasible.

"We were getting very close to the edge of damage," for some of those crops, Furey said, particularly in South Jersey, which got less rain than northwestern New Jersey and has sandy soils that drain quickly.

Woody Eachus, who raises 300-plus dairy cows on 900 acres in Pilesgrove Township, Salem County, was an exception. He got 12 inches of rain in July, which halved the yield from some of his corn fields and damaged the quality of his latest cutting of hay. The 100-degree spurt in early August also pushed down his cows' milk production.

At Steve Jany's Rustin Farms in West Windsor, early rains drowned some fields and then destroyed a second planting. Then he saw no rain from July 27 until this weekend, damaging some soybeans. "I'll take rain over a drought any day," Jany said.

On average, New Jersey had only 0.8 inches of rain in March and even less in August until Friday, compared with 7.4 inches in June and 5.3 inches in July, according to state climatologist and Rutgers University professor Dave Robinson.

Between all the rain, late-June flooding along the Delaware River, wind damage, heat and isolated hail storms this season, farmers in every New Jersey county have been declared eligible for 3.75 percent emergency loans to cover such weather damage from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"The losses were in the millions," said Paul Hlubik, executive director of the department's Farm Service Agency office in New Jersey. Damage was worst in Atlantic, Burlington, Cumberland and Ocean counties, where some farms lost up to half their tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons and pumpkins, he said.

Art Brown, former New Jersey agriculture secretary and a senior associate dean at Rutgers University's agricultural school, predicted yields would probably be down 20 percent from weather damage but said the quality of New Jersey produce this year is excellent overall.

The picture varies from region to region in the state, from farm to farm and even from field to field, noted New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Charles Kuperus. "We have some of the most wonderful, lush crops and then some places that have been decimated by the conditions," he said.

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