In spring of 2022, nearly the entire state of Colorado was parched with heat and drought. One year later, the story is remarkably different, with above-average rainfall and unusually cool temperatures. And while all those back-to-back rainy days put a damper on this year’s picnic season, the extra moisture is doing wonders for Colorado’s croplands.
Colorado State University wheat breeder Esten Mason just completed his annual tour of wheat fields across the Eastern Plains, getting a good look at crop conditions all the way from Baca County up to Julesburg, and everything in between.
After last year’s devastating drought and widespread pest damage, he was heartened to see lush, green fields this time around. “A month ago, I would have said we're going to have a tough year again,” Mason said. “But with that rain, the wheat has just taken off.”
Mason, who has been working to combat a wheat stem sawfly infestationthat has flattened Colorado’s wheat fields in recent years, noted that the heavy rains come with a side benefit for wheat growers: they suppress sawfly activity.
Moisture weighs down the bugs and keeps them from taking flight. “Sawfly does not really like rain,” Mason said. “The level of sawfly pressure has been a lot lower this year. And I think a lot of that is due to the rain.”
When it comes to corn, Nicholas Colglazier, executive director of the Colorado Corn Promotion Council says growers couldn’t be more pleased with the bounty falling from the sky. Corn, after all, loves water.
“This amount of rain has really been a boon for our corn farmers this growing season,” he said. “It’s shaping up to be a good corn year. We can look at the stats and I don’t’ think I’ve ever seen them this good.”
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, less than 17% of the state is currently experiencing drought conditions, a complete turnaround from a year ago, when drought touched 99% of the area of Colorado.
That makes Colorado a standout, as dry weather patterns hit other parts of the agricultural US.
“It's actually the best corn corn crop in the United States right now. Colorado is leading the way, which doesn't happen very often.”Nicholas Colglazier, executive director of the Colorado Corn Promotion Council
“Colorado is going to be the bread basket this year,” Mason concurred. “Kansas has had a really tough year. Nebraska has had a really tough year. We’ve had really nice precipitation that these other states have not.”
Todd Olander, a farmer and maltster who owns Root Shoot Malting in Loveland, Colo. says his fields of corn and barley are thriving this year, and he’s thrilled to see the depleted water supplies replenished across the state. “Overall, we're pretty much ecstatic about the amount of water,” he said.
Not all sunshine and roses
Even as he extolled the wetter season, Olander acknowledged that at this point, his crops could use a little sun. “It's been a really cool spring, so everything's a little bit behind,” he said.
Many crops, from corn to sugar beets, have beenslower to emergethis year than in the past.
“That's because the weather has been abnormally cold for Colorado,” Colglazier explained. “Plus, we also saw some of that Canadian wildfire smoke come down earlier this year, and that really kept the sunlight from hitting the ground and bringing the soil temperatures up.”
The heavy rains have saturated the ground, making it hard for farmers to work the fields and raising the specter of soil erosion as well as moisture-loving fungi and diseases.
But as spring rolls into summer, there’s plenty of time for all that to change for the better. “If we get a few warm weeks here and there, we will definitely see that corn crop catch up really quickly,” Colglazier said.
And for all the potential problems of having too much water, Olander said that dealing with unpredictable weather is just part of farming life.
“Farmers are either complaining that it's raining too much or it's too dry. That's what farming is like. You have to just rely on Mother Nature to give you what you can,” he said. “Yeah it'd be great if it would dry out, but I mean, I'm not going to wish for it to stop raining either.”
And it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop raining just yet. The National Weather Service predicts a continued chance of showers along the front range and eastern plains into next week.
