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A harbinger of fall, September also signals the season for harvesting the fruits of farmers’ long, hot labor has finally arrived.

Martin County Extension Agent Lance Grimes has high hopes for good crops this season.

He balances his enthusiasm with admitting the profit margin for farming this year will be small.

Although crops are healthy, and commodity prices are good, farmers this year have faced an unprecedented rise in expenses.

“You start out knowing you have to have a good crop just to break even,” Grimes said. “It’s tough.”

“Expenses have shot up. All inputs are up almost up to 40 percent,” he said. “Last year, Round Up [a herbicide] was about $18 a gallon, and now it is at about $62 per gallon.”

That is only one aspect of what farmers are paying higher prices for. They are seeing prices rise for fuel, nitrogen and fertilizer skyrocket.

One positive, he said, was the weather proved favorable after a rough, dry beginning this summer.

“There is the potential to have a good crop, as long as we can save it all, and no [destructive] storms come in,” he added.

He said farmers have done all they can do at this point.

“Now it is time to harvest,” he said. “Farmers need to be timely, as best they can, with their harvest.”

Grimes gave a rundown of where each of the county’s crops are, in relation to the harvest.

Tobacco, which accounts for 2,300 acres county-wide, has farmers scrambling to harvest before potentially damaging, seasonal storms arrive.

“The [summer] rain came back and helped tobacco become a good crop,” he said. “But some of the heat we’ve had in the past two or three weeks, hasn’t been favorable. We had a couple of areas that had big rains – all that played a role in tobacco.”

He said, the “holdability” is not there.

He explained, “It is beginning to mature rapidly, so it needs to be harvested quickly. [Farmers] are going to have push hard to save it, but I believe it all can be saved.”

Grimes said many farmers have already begun the process of gathering the thick, leathery, yellowed leaves.

“Some [farmers] will finish this week, some could take as long as the rest of September to finish – even into the first week of October,” he said.

Peanuts, which account for about 9,500 acres, are mostly still underground.

“Peanut harvest will get into full swing, probably in about two weeks,” he said. “Some growers – a small amount — will start to plow (or dig up) peanuts next week. In the next fourteen to twenty-one days, more farmers will be digging peanuts and starting to harvest them.”

He said extension agents will be helping some farmers determine the best time for harvesting.

“We are going to peanut pod-blast, which helps determine the maturity of peanuts, which then determines the optimum time to dig peanuts,” he said.

Pod blasting is where farmers provide samples of peanuts, which are put into a wire basket and a lightweight pressure washer is used to remove the outer layer of the pod (or hull) to reveal the color underneath.

The color of the pod determines when to dig, according to Grimes.

Cotton, which accounts for about 31,700 acres in the county, will be harvested around the middle of October.

“There may be some harvested before then, but the full swing will occur around the middle to the end of October,” he added.

“If we could have gotten a couple of rains in the past two weeks, I think our cotton crop would have been a little better, but I think the potential to have a good crop – not as great as it could have been – is there.”

Corn, which only accounts for about 4,000 acres in the county, is just starting to be harvested, he said. ‘

Soybeans, which account for about 24,000 acres in Martin County, have a vast harvesting range.

“Some farmers will be harvesting beans as early as the twentieth of September, and some as late as November or December,” he said.

“Some of the earlier beans got hit during that hot, dry period we had in summer, so there is some potential for loss there,” Grimes added. “But the later maturing beans (beans planted behind wheat), caught rains in the latter part of summer, and I think there is still potential for them to have a decent crop.”

Deborah Griffin can be reached via email at dgriffin@apgenc.com.

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