Record Rain in Arkansas Dings Fruit, Hay, Timber

First posted on 11-06-2009

By Mary Hightower, U of A Division of Agriculture

Arkansas’ row crops weren’t the only ones to suffer from record rainfall. Fruit, hay and timber also were hurt.

On Wednesday, the governors’ office announced that USDA made six more Arkansas counties eligible for assistance due to the heavy rain: Johnson, Logan, Newton, Ouachita, Scott and Searcy. Five of the counties are in northwest or north-central Arkansas. Ouachita County in southern Arkansas had its wettest October ever. At Camden, 22.39 inches of rain fell, beating the record of 17.98 inches set in 1984.

Saturated ground was making life difficult in Arkansas’ timber industry, said Caroll Guffey, an extension natural resources program associate for the U of A Division of Agriculture. Timber was valued at more than $442 million in 2008.

“It’s definitely a problem for the loggers,” he said Thursday. “Even if there were some areas dry enough to log, the road system to get in or out may be under water.”

Guffey said he heard bad news from mill owners during a meeting on Wednesday in Glenwood in western Arkansas.

“They all had less than a half day’s logs in the yard,” he said. “They’ve been running like that for the last month.

“Some are shutting down, or closing shifts or running one day a week,” Guffey said.

Ironically, “this is the time of year when most mills try to fill as much storage space as

they can,” he said. “November usually starts the wet season, which runs until late May or June. Unless it’s abnormally dry, it’ll be hard for mills to keep enough logs to run full time.”

This spells bad economic news for some timber-dependent regions.

“Loggers are paid on the basis of what they get in,” Guffey said. “It’s a vicious cycle. They can’t bring trees in and they don’t get paid.

“The mills don’t have anything to cut and they have to scale back or shut down,” he said.

The trees themselves are unharmed. “Those species are adapted to withstand the water, especially at this time of year,” he said.

The National Weather Service was continuing its flood warning for Ouachita County. The Ouachita River was receding on Thursday and was expected to fall to 32.7 feet by Friday morning, still well above the 26-foot flood stage.

In Searcy County, the rain made hay cutting difficult, said Brad Runsick, county extension agent for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.

“Up here, the producers just can’t get that last cutting of hay,” he said. “We’ve had three good days of sunshine now. If they’re going to do it, they are going to do it now.”

Unlike the row crop producers who are losing money because water has rendered crops unsellable, or damaged it enough to slash the value, many of the hay producers “are more likely to use what they make,” Runsick said, adding that any hay sold this year would’ve been from earlier, higher quality cuttings.

The Division of Agriculture’s Fruit Research Station in Clarksville received nearly 12 inches of rain in October alone.

“That’s about a quarter of a year’s worth of rain,” said Dan Chapman, the station’s resident director. “Nothing was a total disaster, but production was down in blackberries, peaches and grapes.”

Excess water can be almost as damaging as drought, and in some cases, the symptoms are the same.

“When it’s flooded, the plants can’t take the nutrients up,” Chapman said. “When it’s too dry, there’s not enough fluid to let the plants take up nutrients either.”

Wet ground interfered with the plans of at least one local peach grower “who has been trying to plant a new block, but there hasn’t been a chance to work the ground,” Chapman said.

The rain delayed grape harvest up to three weeks, said Joseph Post, marketing director for Post Familie winery in Altus.

“Thin-skinned varieties like Vidal, Seyval, Chardonnay and Zinfandel suffered bunch rot damage, while the thicker skinned varieties did well,” he said, referring to the Ives, Niagara, Steuben, Noble and Carlos grapes.

On the other hand, “there was no need to irrigate our vineyards this year and Muscadines continue to please us with their seemingly endless productivity year in and year out,” Post said. “We were still harvesting Muscadines in the last week of October.”

The Cooperative Extension Service is a part of the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and offers its programs to all eligible persons regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, gender, age, disability, marital or veteran status, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.