Wet spring keeps Virginia crops growing despite early summer’s blazing heat

This week Virginia has set new heat records and come close to beating old ones for this time of year. The Richmond airport recorded a temperature of 99 degrees at the hottest part of the day on Tuesday, Roanoke reached 99, and Alexandria reached 98. Those high temperatures come at a crucial time for many crops growing across the commonwealth.

“We are at a critical point for certain crops like corn that are either about to pollinate or our pollinating and so it will have an impact,” said Wilmer Stoneman, vice president of agriculture development and innovation for the Virginia Farm Bureau.

Virginia’s largest commodities include corn, soybeans, cotton, peanuts and wheat. In the summer, crops are pollinating but high heat reduces the pollen survival rate, which could impact yields down the road.

“When it comes to corn there’s research that’s been done that says for every day you’re above 90 degrees consecutively you can have a 3-5% reduction in yield during bloom period,” said Matthew Chappell, director of Virginia Tech‘s Tidewater Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

While some may have lamented the amount of rain Virginia experienced this spring, those soggy days and others to come are helping save crops as the temperature rises. The state’s soil is very moist which helps keep crops alive, even though rainy days may make it difficult for farmers to get tractors through their fields. The National Weather Service in Wakefield predicts showers will fall across most regions of the state this weekend and some days next week.

“This is the time of year we need a little temperature but we have to have rain,” Stoneman said.

If things were to take a turn towards drier patterns while high temperatures persist, then farmers would have cause to worry. As of Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that no counties in Virginia are under drought conditions. This year the state has seen an average of three inches more rain than normal.

“This time last year it turned hot, but it also turned dry. We had what a lot of people consider a mini drought and it basically went from a bumper corn crop the year before to basically no corn crop,” Stoneman said. “Producers had half over or didn’t produce any corn last year.”

Chappell said that this year is not necessarily hotter than past years; rather the extreme heat is happening earlier than usual during a delicate time in the growing process for multiple crops. The heat also puts restraints on when laborers can be in the fields tending to crops, as heat indexes can reach extremely dangerous levels.

“Extremes and prolonged weather extremes are always a tough hurdle for farmers to to deal with, but they’re resilient folks,” Stoneman said, adding that the rain is welcome and necessary. “We can’t have all sunshine and make a crop.”

Stoneman also said the wet soil is contributing to a humid weather pattern that can help form thunderstorms that will provide more rain. But that precipitation needs to be widespread across the growing fields to have a big impact on crops.