If you call up a farmer today and ask him what’s happening, he would probably respond, waiting on the rain.
Some isolated showers have come across the southeast Georgia area and the southwest area, but not enough to solve the water shortage. Some peanut producers have started irrigating to try to get enough peanuts to come up along when most of the corn is gone and planted and using irrigation to keep them going. That’s costing money.
There’s also other problems in the area. Two wildfires in the southeast Georgia area has combined to burn about 55,000 acres of good forest land. Some rains during the weekend helped the firefighters hold the line, but state forestry officials said the Highway 82 fire in Brantley County is about 32 percent contained and the Pineland Road fire in Clinch County is about 23 percent contained and they are hoping for rain this weekend.
One weather report said a widespread storm will bring soaking rain this weekend from Texas to Florida causing drought and wildfire risk helping to solve those before turning north and going up the east coast. It’ll impact the east coast this weekend. So everybody’s hoping for rain and this is the weekend.
Maybe we’ll be starting to plant next week when the soil is watered.
Audio Reporting by Tyron Spearman for Southeast AgNet.