Water challenges ahead for area crops
Water is the most important input for agriculture crops. It transpires throughout plants providing turgor, delivering water and essential nutrients to plant cells, and transporting carbohydrates to the roots. The best precision agriculture plans will not result in good crop production without adequate water. Our current challenge is a low water table, and with projected summer temperatures, this situation could worsen. Simply, warmer temperatures and crops’ daily water use causes evaporation of water to be high. Northern Indiana is rated at much below normal for ground water. In the 2012 growing season, some area irrigators were not able to keep up with available soil water needs due to severely low water tables.
another factor that impacts water availability to the crop is the soil composition. Our soils vary greatly in water holding capacity and the ability to release the water to plants. Field capacity is the soils ability to store water with air being available to roots. above field capacity is when tile is needed to help drain the soil. Sandy soils have low water holding capacity, while clay soils have a high water holding capacity. The key factor is water
accessible to the plant. availability of water depends on how tightly the water and soil adhere to each other. a tighter bond will limit the water availability to the plant. Loam soils tend to have the best level of available water for plant use. Once the easily available water is removed, plants start to wilt and show signs of stress.
Irrigation systems apply water in northern Indiana to supplement natural rainfall and keep available water present in the soil for crop growth and production. Irrigators take into account crop water demands and weather conditions to determine irrigation needs. Since center pivot irrigation systems take time to apply water, it is important that timely irrigation occurs to keep up with crop demands and weather impact on available soil water.
Once corn and soybean crops have canopied the water being transpired through these crops is very significate. It tends to be 0.25 inches per day or 1.75 inches per week. That is the challenge for crop production. Even fully charged loam soils at the start of the growing season do not have adequate moisture to grow a crop. crops need to be supplemented with seasonal rainfall and at times irrigation. Our irrigation systems are designed to just supplement the natural rainfall, not replace it.
Due to variable rainfall, there are many fields that are already challenged for adequate available water. The key for this year’s crop is maintaining soil moisture adequate for crop needs. Hopefully for none irrigated fields, this occurs with timely rainfall.
Since april 1, northern Indiana has experience variable rainfall. as of June 6, weather stations indicated significant rainfall shortfalls of 1.47 inches for Rochester, 2.74 inches for Goshen, and 3.6 inches for Laporte. currently, the northern edge of Indiana and southern Michigan is rated as abnormally dry.
With weather models used to predict weather, there is positive and also concerning news in the forecast. June is predicted for above normal temperatures, which we are experiencing, and an equal chance of normal rainfall. “Equal chance” designates that the various models used to predict temperature and moisture do not strongly support weather other than average weather for the period. The July, august, and September weather forecast predictions are similar to June. There is a 30 to 40 percent probability for above normal temperatures, the western half of IN has an equal chance for average rainfall and the eastern half of IN has 30 to 40 percent probability of above normal moisture.
With higher temperatures increasing crop moisture usage, we need normal or above normal moisture during the critical crop production months of July, august, and September. based on national weather predictions, above normal temperatures are likely to occur. Hopefully, northern Indiana will receive average to above average rainfall to allow crops to be productive and limit crop stress. Farmers need the yield and good prices to recover from previous years’ financial challenges.