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I am about to give up farming

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BigBonner

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It has been a rough two years on the farm and when I think I have things whipped and in order here comes another disaster .
Who can fix this ?

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BigBonner

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What did this?

Good old mother nature with too much rain . It is still raining and more to come .
When the sun pops out there will be more hit the ground .
Note the weeds . I can not get in the fields to work and the weeds are the least of the problem .

Last year at this time I was begging for rain and for the temperatures to cool down .

That is a 10 acre field of mine and I would say it is over half gone .
 

DGBAMA

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WOW. Hope the weather levels out for you. And I thought it was bad watching my 200ish plants drowning over the last few days. I have standing water in my raised beds which are on a hill slope. I never thought it was possible for the side of a mountain to have flooding problems.

hopefully they surprise you with a better than expected recovery rate.
 

BigBonner

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I wish I had the money to be your banker. Any crop insurance at all?

Sure do have insurance on the 10 acres but there is that old insurance get around paying for a loss .
Tobacco insurance is guaranteed pounds per acre .Say 10 acres is guaranteed 1750 lbs per acre . Insurance will cover 65 percent of that .That means They will guarantee you 1137 lbs @ $1.70 per pound .
That equals $1932 per care .
Now here's the catch If I have 4.5 good acres left out of the 10 acres and I get 2400 lbs of whole leaf tobacco per acre and I sell it for $2 a pound that equals $21,600

Insurance only guaranteed me $19,320 . If I would have sold 4.5 acres @ 2400 lbs per acre of whole leaf then I get nothing . To collect insurance you would have to have a near total loss .

One more loop hole for insurance is their premium They would still take $2,125 more from what they guaranteed me to cover their policy .
Insurance will make you harvest any tobacco that is in the field good or bad , big or small .

I have over $10,000 invested in that 10 acres now
 

leverhead

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Man, that's hard to look at! I cried over 30' X 45' that looked like that last year. I know why, but I don't how you do it.
 

BigBonner

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Deluxestogie

Tobacco can stand some water but when the soil has all it can handle it starts the drowning process .
Tobacco standing in water for a day may not hurt the plants if the temperatures stay cool and the sun does not pop out hot and shinny before the soil dry's out .
Higher parts of the field look ok but level to low areas are what drowned the most .
I am very afraid when the sun does come out that the entire field may drop .
When the tobacco drops like that it will most of the time either stunt the plants or they die completely . Either way they become useless .

We have had over 6 inches of rain in the past week . This is not counting what I am getting outside right now and what I will get tomorrow . My wife keeps a record of the rain fall we get .

I still have over 135 acres of hay to cut and roll .If the rain finishes my tobacco then I won't have to worry with the weeds and cultivating the fields .
All I know is its going to make for a tough Christmas around here
 

jekylnz

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Ouch..that's no good mate..we all will be thinking and praying that things get better for you bro...hopefully some will pull through if they don't drown. ..I suppose you would have tried every drainage options already? ? Soak holes etc??
The only other thing you could do is go under shade..or grow under some other plant/trees...your place is sounding like the rainy season's in Indonesia etc...
 

DGBAMA

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The southeast USA needs to add Monsoon season between Tornado season and hurricane season.
 

SmokesAhoy

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Ah, BigB I feel for you man, for almost everyone else this is a hobby and losses are sad but no big deal in your case though, like you said this affects everything else down the road. And you are such a great guy you deserve so much better out of ma nature. I really am rooting for some late game rally from your field brother.
 

Knucklehead

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There's hope Larry. I think this is supposed to move out after tomorrow and it should go to partly cloudy instead of straight to blazing sun about Monday. Maybe that will give them a recovery period. Keep your chin up, it could be worse. The family is healthy and the tractor has a new pinion gear, right?
 
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