It’s still early in the planting season on Georgia farms, with
most of the cotton and
peanuts still to be planted. But crops already in the fields —
especially wheat, corn and
tobacco — are running into early trouble.
“The mild winter and mild, dry spring have led to increased
insect populations,” said
Randy Hudson, an entomologist with the University of Georgia
Extension Service.
Insects normally can hit Georgia crops only in small numbers by
mid-April. But this
year’s weather, Hudson said, has enabled many insects to
multiply early through many
generations. So their populations are unusually high.
“Hessian flies have been found at a very high level in some
south Georgia wheat
fields,” Hudson said.
Hudson has alerted farmers and county extension agents to check
for Hessian fly
damage in anemic fields of early-planted wheat.
Georgia growers don’t normally treat their fields for Hessian
flies. They can control the
pests with a soil insecticide at planting. But mostly they rely
on resistant varieties and
planting practices to keep down populations.
Hessian flies can cut yields dramatically in heavily infested
fields. And they aren’t the
only problems Georgia wheat is encountering.
“Aphids are causing some damage statewide,” Hudson said. “We’re
encouraging
growers to scout for aphids and to treat their wheat if
populations exceed threshold
levels.”
The aphids are sucking the juices from wheat plants as the
plants are forming heads of
grain. That not only cuts yields, but lowers the weight, and
therefore the quality, of the
grain the plants produce.
James Clark, an extension agent in Applying County, said the
mild winter has hurt
wheat farmers in another way.
“We’ve got some late-season wheat that just isn’t going to
head,” he said. “It just
didn’t get enough cold weather.”
Farmers often plant a mix of early-, mid- and late-season
varieties, Clark said, to
spread their risks and get the best mix of varieties. Many good
varieties are late-season,
or long-season, wheat. While they offer protection against late
freezes, they also
require more chill hours to produce grain heads. And this year
they didn’t get them.
Overall wheat losses haven’t been heavy yet. “Right now,
probably 10 percent would
cover it,” Clark said. But some farmers have been hard-hit. “One
grower in the
county,” he said, “has plowed up 200 acres of late-season
wheat.”
Hudson said chinch bugs and stinkbugs are also invading fields
of tender, young corn.
So are wireworms and rootworms, which feed on developing
seedlings and strip roots
from young plants, causing them to wilt and die.
Tobacco, too, is taking an early hit.
“We’ve had a very early flight of tobacco budworms,” said
extension entomologist
David Jones. “They’re causing problems in early-transplanted
tobacco.”
Tobacco budworms started showing up in force in the second week
of April, he said.
That’s three to four weeks earlier than normal.
“Flea beetles, too, are tearing us up in recently transplanted
tobacco,” he said.
Jones expects mid-April rains to add mole crickets to the list
of insects bugging Georgia
tobacco.
“We definitely have more insect problems than we had this time
last year,” he said.
