As climate change drives an increase in spring rains across the Midwest, it can mean more anxiety for farmers eager to start spring planting. When farmers have to wait for fields to dry out, planting days can become endurance tests that stretch into the night. As climate change drives an increase in spring rains across the Midwest, it can mean more anxiety for farmers eager to start spring planting.
Waiting on the weather is an old story in agriculture, but as climate change drives an increase in spring rains across the Midwest, the usual anxiety around the ritual of spring planting is expected to rise along with it. In Ohio, for example, farmers have lost about five days of field work in the month of April since 1995, according to Aaron Wilson, the state’s climatologist.
This April, Katy Rogers, who manages the 117-acre Teter Retreat and Organic Farm in Noblesville, Indiana, was planting lettuce seedlings past sunset, long after her staff had left for the day. Like the Woodruffs, she was playing catchup after heavy rains flooded some of her fields weeks earlier. On her small vegetable farm, multiple crops are planted in the spring to harvest in the summer, and other crops are planted in the summer to then harvest in the fall.
“It’s exhausting to come out and be in rain that feels like it’s slapping you,” Rogers said. She said she expected to plant more in covered structures and less in fields in the future. The Woodruffs, like many larger farms, rely on tile drainage to remove excess water from fields. These tiles are large perforated plastic pipes about 3 feet below the soil that collect water and carry it away, usually to a canal between fields. It’s a costly system, but one that pays off in crop yield, Ross Woodruff said.
“When you get those really, really torrential rain events, everybody is going to be in trouble,” Carpenter said. “Those of us who are actively working to increase our soil’s organic matter, that is going to make a difference in how long that water is retained.”