Rain will help but crops need more

Overnight on June 30, anywhere from 1.5 to 4 inches of rain fell across the 600 acres that Brandon Batten farms around Stricklands Crossroads. Another four-tenths to 1.2 inches fell this past Sunday night.

“I am very thankful for the rain we received,” Batten said in an email.

The rain of course was too late to save most of the 200 acres of corn Batten planted this season. Though, “my late corn looks like it will make something now, especially if we get more rain this week,” he said.

Batten also has 150 acres of tobacco, 300 acres of soybeans and maybe 80 acres of hay.

“It will go a long ways toward turning the tobacco around and getting the soybeans going,” Batten said of the rain. “We should also be able to cut our hay soon again.”

Tobacco in particular is resilient.

“It is a weed,” Batten said in an earlier interview. “You never give up on a tobacco crop.”

Still, tobacco is not immune to the whims of weather.

“We are certainly taking a loss in both yield and quality due to the heat and the drought,” Batten said.

“What I’ve been able to irrigate, which is only about 20%, looks great,” he added. “What I have not been able to irrigate, the tobacco is short in stature, the bottom leaves are burning off.”

“The slow growing creates a lot of other problems down the road,” he added.

Batten said he was on schedule to begin harvesting his irrigated tobacco next week. “But the rest is a good three weeks away from harvest,” he said.

Farming being what it is, bursts of rain after a long dry spell cab present challenges for tobacco too, Batten said. “I’ve got fertilizer out — a month ago — that’s never been rained on,” he said before the rain on June 30. “So when we do get rain, it’s gonna blow up and get big and hard to manage with sucker control and everything.”

In a normal year — “whatever a normal year is anymore” — Batten expects to produce 2,800 to 3,000 pounds of tobacco per acre.

“I hope to make at least two-thirds of that potential — if we have favorable conditions and if we miss hurricanes in August and September,” he said, “which is two really big ifs.”

“We still have the potential to make 2,000, 2,200 pounds per acre just because of the resilience of the tobacco crop,” Batten added. “But that’s two big ifs that I can’t control.”

Batten sells his tobacco under contract to leaf dealers and domestic manufacturers, meaning he agrees to produce a certain number of pounds for them.

“I would say the chances are slim that we fill all our pounds,” Batten said.

Most immediately, that means a loss of earnings.

“But there’s also the potential for cuts,” Batten said, explaining that leaf dealers and manufacturers could reduce the tobacco they buy from him in 2025.

“They grade us based on delivery, quality and volume,” he said. “So anytime you don’t meet any of those criteria, you have the potential to get a cut on next year’s volume.”

Thankfully, the buyers do take extenuating circumstances, including weather, into account.

“I mean, normally, they’re very understanding because they understand the conditions we’re working in, and we are working with mother nature,” Batten said. “But they also have customers to satisfy.

“Right now, there’s a worldwide shortage of tobacco, so it’s in high demand, which further increases the pressure on us in the U.S. to produce.”

Soybeans, like tobacco, are resilient, Batten said. “And the varieties that we have now … have a longer window to put on pods and make soybeans than something like corn,” he said.

With corn, “if you don’t get rain during that 10-day pollination window, you’re going to miss it,” he said. “Soybeans are a little bit wider window to hit.”

When it comes to rain, the make-or-break window for soybeans is next month, Batten said. “Beans really depend on rain in August,” he said. “If we get rain in August, we’ll have a bean crop.”

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