The recent heat wave is taking a toll on local crops and livestock.
Brian Rees, extension agent for the Lyon County Extension Office, said crops are dying in the heat and dry weather.
“It’s drying them out rapidly,” Rees said.
Rees said from a scientific standpoint, you’re looking at six inches of topsoil in the uplands. The water supply is about a half inch a day. With six inches you are out of water in 12 days. He said the clay holds on to water deeper than the plant can reach.
Corn is the most visibly affected as it dries out from the heat.
“I did see some corn along the Americus Road between Sunday and Tuesday it went from looking like it was hurting to having a white cast to it,” Rees said. “It was some decent-looking corn. Had we not been 105 degrees for a week, and even if we would have had a good two-inch rain Fourth of July weekend, I think that corn would have held on and probably would have doubled its yield easily. Those fields were far enough along that there will be some corn out there. Not nearly what would have potentially been out there three weeks ago.”
Soybeans are being affected, too. Many of the flowers have not made pods and pods have aborted the beans, Rees said.
“Normally if it gets above 95 degrees the soybean flowers will not be able to pollinate,” he said. “If they don’t pollinate they will drop flowers, drop pods or abort the beans in the pods. Soybeans are not efficient.”
Prairie hay is being affected, as well.
“Yields are a little low,” Rees said. “If it was burned they are running from one third to a half of what it was last year.”
However, Rees said the past three years there’s been a bumper crop of hay.
“We’re comparing this year’s crop with better than average previous year’s crops,” Rees said, of the hay crop.
If the heat continues, livestock will suffer as well.
“I haven’t heard of any major livestock issues locally,” Rees said. “With the temps up in the upper 70s and 80s at night, cattle never really get the chance to drop their body temps. There’s no recovery time. Just like people, the heat is cumulative and the longer it goes on it’s harder on all bodies.”
Water issues for livestock could become a problem as well.
“Some places in Oklahoma and southeast Kansas are looking at the possibility of blue green algae, which can be harmful to animals,” Rees said. “There’s just a lot of things that are working negatively from the water standpoint.”
Meanwhile, around the state, a new report offers some bleak numbers on the drought’s affects on Kansas farmers.
In its weekly crop-weather update, Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service reports that topsoil and subsoil moisture supplies in the state are both at their lowest levels since November 2006.
Among the nine reporting districts around the state, the agency said Monday that only the north-central and central districts reported having any surplus topsoil moisture.
Meanwhile, year-to-date rainfall in the southern town of Anthony is more than a foot below normal. Ashland, Hutchinson, Medicine Lodge and Dodge City are all 10 inches below normal.
Combined with another week of 100-degree-plus temperatures, the weather is taking a toll on some crops. The agency says 52 percent of the corn crop has now silked, compared with a five-year average of nearly 70 percent.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.