You
turn into agriculture experts are calling it a weather whiplash first too much dry weather caused drought in Wisconsin now there's too much rain farmers and their crops are feeling the effects we turn to Natasha Paris covering central Wisconsin as regional crops educator with UW Madison extension who joins us from green lake and thanks very much for doing so.
It looks it looks like our signal to you in that field in green lake just kind of went fritzy so we're going to have to try to get that back.
Can you hear me Natasha yeah because you're you're um can you hear me I can hear you now but there's um in my video yeah so I'm I'm not gonna diagnose any of that from the set but Marissa and folks will see what we're doing.
Okay.
Of course, okay.
Okay sounds like we're gonna go again.
We think it's okay.
So are we gonna take it from the top?
Turning to agriculture experts are calling it a weather whiplash first too much dry weather caused drought in Wisconsin now there's too much rain farmers and their crops are feeling the effects.
We turn to Natasha Paris covering central Wisconsin as regional crops educator with UW Madison extension who joins us from green lake and thanks very much for being here.
Thanks for having me so describe the weather whiplash as you call it how severe is it?
Well last year at this time we had just experienced our fourth driest may on record and our 10th driest June on record and we were still in drought here in Green Lake County into the end of May.
And now here in Green Lake we aren't in drought anymore and in fact we've had excess amounts of rain and statewide we had the 10th wettest may on record and the numbers are still being finalized but we're looking at being in the top 10 wettest June as well.
So where in the state is the worst of the water access.
It's really in that north central region spanning kind of from the northeast over to the north central.
There's there's kind of this this band across.
I think it's in Marathon Lincoln Langley area that's that's that's had an excess amount of rain and I've heard from folks up there that they really haven't been able to get a lot of their crops in and there's a lot of fields that are just standing empty or the crops have failed.
Yeah, that was what I was going to ask is what has been the effect on crops.
Yeah, so we have we have fields where the crops were able to get in early and sometimes they they've made it through and and done and done pretty well but then sometimes they got caught in those absolute deluges of rain and they they were drowned out.
So we've been thinking talking about things like replant or there's there's cases where they've just never been able to get in the fields at all.
And so we're looking at at what we call a prevented plant situation where you if you have the right crop insurance you might be able to receive some type of payment but there's a lot of fields where the corn was planted a month late if not more.
So what are what are farmers telling you about their their mood with all of this right now?
It really depends on the farm. It depends on what they're growing for.
You know, they're there for the some of them are feeling are really feeling the pinch in terms of if they are a dairy farm and they planted a new seating of alfalfa and they weren't able to to get much out of it or the alfalfa that they have
been able to harvest because it was delayed because it was so wet.
The quality isn't very good and so you're just not going to get as many pounds of milk out of that.
So that's really been putting a pinch on some of our dairy farmers.
So your weekly reporting also notes manure runoff risk is that an overall risk or more so in specific places in the state?
Well, it's it's a risk based on soil pipe and topography.
So areas where we have those those those those clay soils and the filtier soils that are that are going to move more easily that can that can cause risk and then obviously on areas where there's there's more hills.
And then also the type of tillage and the type of cropping system being used.
And so there's been some rain events this year that have kind of overdone whatever cropping system has been in place.
But so we've really tried to help people use the tools that are available to assess the intensity of the rainfall that could be predicted to better to time their manure applications to prevent runoff.
So gauging what you're seeing to date.
What does the rest of the growing season hold?
Well, we are we're looking at a a little bit warmer a little bit a little bit wetter July.
But then over the course of the summer as a whole, we're looking at warmer.
There's not a clear signal yet about what about being wet or dry.
And so at this point, those who have really had these early season struggles are hoping for some some break in the rain so that they can at least get established maybe maybe an alternative forage here in the in the high summer to be able to grow some feed for the animals.
And those who are growing for grain purposes are looking at really dialing in their their disease management because this hot wet weather is going to really kick up the incidence of disease that we're having in our crops and so really making sure that we're
having those fungicide applications at the right time so we can counteract disease that can affect yield and quality.
Wow, it's just a lot. Natasha Parris, thank you very much.
Thank you.
It really is a great looking shot. Thank you so much for doing that.
Thank you.
Yeah, did it turn out okay?
Yeah, it did. It looked great and you are just so full of information and knowledge. It's great. I appreciate it.
Yeah, no, thank you guys so much.
Well, happy fourth and that that should be that'll be up on our web page.