Time has run out for many farmers who have decided to give up
on some of their crops
because of the drought. Now they must decide what to do
next.

Roger Godwin of Grady County, in southwest Georgia, is no
different. The time came last
week for him to decide if he should try to save his corn. When
he
looked at the
cornstalks, he was disappointed.

“Nothing, nothing,” Godwin said as he felt several
cornstalks to find ears of
corn. “Nothing. Nothing.”

A Moment of
Truth

It was a moment of truth for Godwin. The time had come to put
the corn out of its
economic misery by mowing it down. “We went right at 10
weeks without a drop of rain
during pollination time, when corn should have been 6 feet tall
or better,” he said.
“Most of it is doing good to be 5 feet tall.”

The Grady County farmer and an insurance company
representative declared almost 90
percent of his corn too far gone to try to save. “It’s a bad
feeling, having to
destroy it,” he said, “because you put all your inputs (seed,
fertilizer, etc.) into it.”

The lingering drought destroyed the corn he worked long and
hard to grow. Looking back,
Godwin didn’t have a fighting chance. His corn plants grew, but
produced almost no corn.
It looks deceptively healthy, tall and green. But it doesn’t have
nearly enough ears to
make it economically feasible for him to even harvest the
crop.

He would be lucky to harvest 18 bushels per acre. But he
hasn’t been lucky so far, and
he doubts his corn would get enough rain if he decided to hang
on. With such a poor yield,
it would cost him more to harvest the crop than he would get when
he sold it.

Insurance Won’t Cover
Costs

He’ll get some insurance money, but he still loses in the end.
“I’m not going to
cover all my costs,” he said.

Godwin hopes to recover some of his losses by salvaging the
remaining fertilizer he
intended the corn to use. He hopes now it will grow grain
sorghum. Then again, the drought
already claimed one crop on his land, and it could easily destroy
the next one, too.
Godwin accepted his insurance loss appraisal for his corn.

Many other Georgia farmers are having to do the same.

Now they have to decide what to do with their insured cotton
and peanut crops. Agricultural
economists with the University of Georgia Extension Service tell
farmers if they expect to
produce 30 percent of a normal yield or less, seriously consider
the insurance settlement.

Between 31 percent and 50 percent of normal crop is a tough
call. Farmers must consider
the quality of the crop, the market price at harvest and how much
money is needed to
finish the crop. If a farmer thinks he can make more than 51
percent of his normal peanut
or cotton yield, he should strongly consider growing out the
crop.