Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

A newsletter for faculty, staff and students

September-October 2005 • Vol. 31, No. 5

Farmers struggle with high fuel prices and drought 

“At these prices (for fuel and related inputs) and current commodity prices, we just can’t do it. You’ve heard that before, but this time it’s real,” David Eddy, a farmer from New Madrid in the Missouri Bootheel, said in one of many conversations on the same topic at a recent University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture field day.

RICE FERTILITY - Dr. Rick Norman discusses rice fertility research at Northeast Research and Extension Center in plots that are kept flooded by water supplied through plastic pipe. Due to high fuel prices, the cost of pumping water this year has rivaled that of urea fertilizer, usually the greatest expense for rice farmers.

The Aug.25 field day at the Northeast Research and Extension Center (NEREC) at Keiser in Mississippi County included a tour of research fields of cotton, rice, soybeans, corn and grain sorghum.

Most Arkansas row-crop producers plan for a mid-summer drought and have an irrigation system to water at least some fields. The state has 1.5 million acres of rice, which is grown in flooded fields. Most of the state’s 910,000 acres of cotton and 320,000 acres of corn are irrigated. About two-thirds of the three million acres planted in soybeans are irrigated if water is available.

The price of diesel fuel to run irrigation pumps and other equipment has nearly doubled in two years. The pumps have run much longer than usual because of the severity of the drought.

Gov. Mike Huckabee asked the USDA to declare Arkansas a statewide drought disaster area, which will enable farmers who qualify to obtain low-interest loans.

Rice agronomist Dr. Chuck Wilson estimated that the average cost of pumping the water needed to grow an acre of rice this year is about $100 compared to $40 to $50 last year.

Urea — nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas — is usually the greatest input expense in rice farming. It cost 50 percent more this year than last.

The list goes on. Farmers often pay a fuel surcharge for delivery of seed and other bulk materials. The rising cost of airplane fuel increases chemical application costs.

The severity of the drought has caused some farmers to run short of water or pumping capacity, Wilson said. Farmers abandoned parts of some rice fields they couldn’t reach with enough water. Some soybean fields that are normally watered after needs are met for higher valued rice, cotton and corn received little or none this year.

Cotton specialist Dr. Bill Robertson said, “We have three bales of money in a two-bale crop,” mainly due to the cost of watering.

Research to reduce water usage and pumping costs include development of a new very early maturing, cold-tolerant rice variety, ‘Spring’, by Drs. Karen Moldenhauer and James Gibbons. It can be planted earlier that other varieties to take advantage of spring rains. The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture released foundation seed of ‘Spring’ as a public variety to qualified seed growers in 2005.

Dr. Daniel Stephenson, a system agronomist based at NEREC, is in the second year of a three-year, multi-state study of an alternative watering system for rice that has the potential to cut water usage and pumping costs in half.

 Rather than keeping fields flooded, water is allowed to decline until soil moisture reaches 85 percent saturation. Then water is pumped back into the field using poly-pipe across the high side of the field with multiple floodgates to improve coverage.

Plant physiologists Drs. Andy King and Larry Purcell are evaluating soybean cultivars for drought tolerance traits that might be bred into future commercial varieties. Soybean breeder Dr. Pengyin Chen is field-testing new breeding lines with increased drought-tolerance potential.

Variety performance tests for soybean, cotton, corn and grain sorghum are conducted in both irrigated and non-irrigated fields to determine which varieties are best for dryland production.