Henry County ranks between third and fourth in the nation in peanut acreage and in the top 10 for cotton acreage. Currently, Henry County has around 250-300 full-time farm employees.
“Farming takes a dedicated individual, and Henry County has several,” said Larry Wells, superintendent of the Wiregrass Substation - Auburn Experiment Station. “Along with our full-time farmers, we have several others who have taken up another career, but they still enjoy farming in their spare time.
“Why do I say it takes a dedicated individual to be a farmer? Well, there are not too many careers that revolve around the weather like farming, and we all know, you never can actually predict exactly how the weather will cooperate with you or not. And, you can’t forget how the economy affects our farmers as well. Higher fuel prices mean higher fertilizer prices, and diesel is higher than gasoline.”
Farmers were hoping for a good harvest this year. The commodity prices are higher than they have been in very long time. However, weather conditions are definitely lowering the farmers’ hope for a very high yield.
“Farmers are suffering from a lack of rain,” Wells said. “Farmers started planting peanuts in April and May, and we had basically no rain in May. We really did not see any rain until the third week in June. This is not good. We are looking at a lot of poor, skimpy stands. We have had some farmers wait to later to plant hoping conditions would improve, and we have had some farmers who have replanted seeds. We already have lost our corn crops due to no rain. Our farmers are worried; we have to have a change in our weather pattern soon. We are hoping we will. It is still not too late.”
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