Riffing on Farm Aid

Willie and the boys will be holding the 22nd Farm Aid concert tomorrow in New York City. New York City? Farm Aid was first held in Champaign, Illinois, in 1985, back during the farm crisis years. There seemed then to have been a clear mission for the concert--helping farmers who were losing their land. Now the talk is a lot about the "Good Food Movement" and such.

There won't be any "factory-farmed junk food" sold at the Randalls Island concert tomorrow, according to a story in the New York Times on Friday.

What a slate of performers for this concert. Besides Willie Nelson, there's Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Gregg Allman, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and Derek Trucks, for example. You certainly can't fault Farm Aid for its music. You have to admire that the founders of the show have stuck by their guitars on this mission for the past 22 years.

But, is there something a bit elitist now about Farm Aid? The theme of local food production is fine. But food in the wider world in which most of us live requires mechanization, transportation, and new technology. Forty acres and a mule might be a cool name for a band, but it's a myth for feeding the masses, isn't it?

"For the first time, concert concessions will feature all fresh, local, organic and family farmed food," a Farm Aid press release says. No hot dogs at this show.

Farm Aid claims to have raised $30 million for farmers, or at least for "programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the current system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms."

I do wish I could go hear the music. And it would be interesting to see how many farmers are there rockin' the day away.

By the way, a video replay of the concert will be available on the Web on Thursday through September 19 at farmaid.org.

Meeting Frank--face to face

Frank Lechtenberg (left), a Butte, Nebraska, farmer is a regular visitor to Agriculture Online's Marketing Talk discussion group, finding it a good source of information on the grain markets, and maybe even a source of entertainment from time to time.

In early July, Frank had the idea that it would be good to meet some of the folks who particpate in the discussion group, and posted a message proposing a meeting --somewhere, sometime. "I think everyone of you have something to share, and it would be a little marketing meeting and discussion," he wrote.

More than sixty messages later, the first-ever Marketing Talk Meeting was established.

Frank (frankne) is in Des Moines, Iowa, today talking with folks that he has only known by an online handle--hihowrya, P.O'd Farmer, Captron, Don N Mo, etc.

"I just thought it would be fun to put a face on these names," he said.

Frank's not one of most active posters on the site (and he sure doesn't like his picture taken), but he says he learns a lot by reading what farmers from around the country are saying about crop conditions and marketing strategies.

"I use the site on a daily basis," he says. "It will be good to meet of few of these folks."

It's been good meeting you, Frank. Thanks for the good idea.

Don't kick the cows

Befriending a Simmental cow

A friend of mine, a dairy farmer, was telling me recently about an incident on his place that was still bothering him. He had fired his hired hand (and rehired him later), after he saw the man kicking one his Holsteins. "Don't kick the cows!" he shouted loudly and slowly, ensuring his English would be clearly understood. His employee spoke Spanish and was a good worker and family man, but the moment had gotten away from him, and he was caught in the act of abusing a farm animal.

Telling the story, my friend repeated the line with even greater emphasis: "Don't kick the cows." He sure made me take notice. I know he struggled with his reaction to the whole thing, trying to balance his concern for the cattle with the practical aspects of milking a hundred cows. Anyway, my farmer friend is the kind of man that people should see caring for cattle.

It can be a rough and tumble world on livestock farms, as people in the business know. Handling animals--whether it's for milking, dehorning, birthing, or medicating, takes patience. And sometimes the animals get the best of things. My dairy farmer friend has been gored by a bull and kicked in the knee, among other things, resulting in major injuries. But, if you're involved in animal agriculture, you also expect that producers will shepherd the animals in their care with grace and compassion. I believe most of them do.

A story on Agriculture Online this week, Activists Slowly Shifting US Animal Agriculture Practices, describes how animal rights activists are making headway in influencing public policy on livestock care. In some cases, large meat production companies are responding with changes in their practices, as Smithfield Foods did recently in announcing a phase-out of individual sow gestation crates.

In the story, Temple Grandin, an animal behavior specialist at Colorado State University and expert on humane treatment of farm animals, is quoted as saying that agriculture needs to clean up its own house such that it could showcase its practices to the general public.

"There is no excuse for rotten apples, and the industry needs to speak out against them," Grandin said.

Wheat to fight for acres

Wheat harvest in Ukraine

(Photo courtesy Ukrainian Analytical Agency UkrAgroConsult.)

If your roots are in someplace like central Nebraska, like mine are, you might have a sense of what it's like to think about putting wheat back in a crop rotation mix. In places where wheat hasn't been seen much for many years, the crop could be making a comeback, stepping in the middle of the corn vs. soybean fight.

There's been lots of good news for wheat prices lately. Last week, for example, Agriculture Online correspondent Louise Gartner reported on a "huge export sales number," 2.1 MMT, double the trade estimate, and the largest week's worth of sales since 1996. The sale was a "whopper," she said, and signals that buyers are "desperate for immediate needs."

Global conditions for wheat harvest were documented in a photo gallery we put together last week, World wheat snapshots. The images provide some further perspective on why wheat prices are on the rise now and why the crop is expected to compete next season for acres that were once surely destined for corn or soybeans.

Beans in the high teens?

A rather rare soybean field in Buffalo County, Nebraska

On Monday, I was driving from Des Moines to visit my family's farm in Nebraska. I jumped off I-80 just west of Grand Island and took the backroads northwest through the Platte River valley and then into the hills of Buffalo County.

At one point, buzzing down a gravel road, I had a strange feeling. I realized I had been driving through wall-to-wall corn on both sides of the road for a long stretch. I looked down at the odometer and started to measure. Went about six miles before I spotted something besides corn--a smallish bean field, like a punctuation mark, then back to corn.

On our little plot in Buffalo County, we planted all beans this year, though. That's them in the photo above, looking pretty good on a 98-degree day. When I walked up the hill there to look at the pivot, all you could see was corn, except for our dryland patch of beans across the road.

I realize Nebraska farmers grow a lot of continous corn, but they know how to grow beans, too. Go big red, the state has the second highest average soybean yield in the U.S, tied with Indiana, a half bushel behind Iowa. So, man, where have all the soybeans gone, long time passing?

USDA reported this month that farmers planted the fewest acres of beans this spring since 1994. Nationally, soybean production declined 15%, versus a 19% jump for corn. Soybean acres fell by more than a million acres from last year in Indiana, Minnesota, and Nebraska, USDA said.

Anyway, this image of a corn-covered landscape stuck in my head for the whole trip back and forth to Nebraska. And, every day I keep thinking this volatile grain market wants to say more and more about soybean prices.

Okay, so I'll just get to the point. Our markets editor, Mike McGinnis, dropped by the office today, leaned in the doorway, and shot me a sly grin. A little birdie, who prefers to go unnamed, told him that beans could go to $18 at some point in the next sometime, Mike said. The little birdie is a well-known markets analyst.

I'll not go into all the bean numbers here. A lot smarter people than me do that every day 0n our Web site markets pages. But, you can just see the drama with your own eyes in one certain part of Nebraska. Beans ain't competing this year.

Ron and Susan Mortensen in their Agriculture Online column last week, on a much more conservative note than our little birdie, put it this way: "The basic fact for soybeans is that they must do much better in 2008 in the fight for acres.... Price must do a better job of attracting soybean acres...."

Would $18 get the job done?

Search for your health's sake

Farmers have special health issues, which is why rural health long has had frontline coverage in Successful Farming magazine and on Agriculture Online. And it's one reason why our editors were pleased to learn that Meredith Corporation, the owner of SF and AGOL (and a passel of other media products) has acquired Healia (www.healia.com), a health information search engine.

Healia is a new tool designed to help consumers and health professionals find the "highest quality and most personally relevant search results," Meredith said in a statement about the acquisition.

Healia differs from Google and other general search engines. It uses what it calls a Quality Index Score, which helps glean the best health information from the Web. Healia enables you to personalize findings with "personal search" filters. These can include your gender, age, and race. The engine uses "advanced semantic technology" to improve the effectiveness of the search.

In some experimenting with the site, I searched for info on use of a newer medication for high blood pressure. One of the features allowed me to sort the findings by "dosage," "uses," and "side effects." Each Healia listing included a description of the "attributes" of the source, including whether it's basic or advanced reading, whether it's professional information, and if it is from an HONCode Site.

Comparing Healia and Google searches on the same keyword for the blood pressure medication, I saw some differences. Google turned up about 409,000 results, while Healia with its more focused search gleaned 923 listings. The top three listings on Google were from the manufacturer of the drug; on Healia it was a Federal Drug Administration source, WebMD, and a drug information database called Druglib.com. Two others of Google's top ten listings were from the same source, Drugs.com, and two were from FDA. Healia's top sources were more varied, and included a drug encyclopedia, the Mayo Clinic, and a pharmacists' organization.

The result of my little experiment is that I know a great deal more about treating high blood pressure with this particular drug. Both Google and Healia led me to a mix of credible sources. But in the end, I felt that Healia worked harder, sorting and labelling information in a more creative way.

Anyway, next time you need to research a health issue, check out Healia and the Rural Health section of Agriculture Online.

Farming with an iPhone

Reviews of Apple's new iPhone have been mixed, and the devices are pretty pricey, but I still want one. Its integration of a phone, iPod, Web browser, e-mail, camera, photo organizer and everything else reminds me of the same kind of innovation that accompanied the invention of the graphical Web browser, and we know what that's meant to the world of agriculture.

If you're wanting to window shop, the "guided tour" of the device on the Apple Web site shows off a device that appears to be intuitive and fun to use. I can see farmers having a smart new tool here for keeping in touch with the world, and entertaining themselves, while out in the field and barn.

After the bugs are worked out of the thing, I have a sense that comparing iPhone type of technology to what came before is going to be like tractors to horses.

Cost is an issue for many consumers, according to a poll on News.com, in which nearly 20% of respondents say they will wait to buy one when the devices drop to under $200. $200?

A farmer posting on Agriculture Online agrees on the price issue: "600 bucks is a lot of benjamins to be dropping in the manure or oil bucket," he says.

Yeah, the iPhone is a bit expensive. But, for a farm tool that's a Swiss Army knife of communication? Anyway, I still want one.

Women on the map

One of the more lively discussion groups on Agriculture Online over the years has been its Women in Ag section. There you'll find people talking topics from livestock care and farm management to peanut butter cookies and the Sopranos finale. It's a friendly, intelligent kind of place on the Web.

About ten years ago, the discussion group inspired a face-to-face meeting of the contributors. Women came from all over the country to get together for a couple days at Living History Farms in Des Moines. It was one of the first times I started to fathom the power this new medium held for uniting people in positive ways.

A recent poster on the WIA board asked people where they are from, prompting one of our staff to create a Women in Agriculture map for the group. Check out this cool application, a beta product from a new company, Frappr.

It's not the same as meeting in Des Moines, but this new tool shows a nice little snapshot of where we all live in the world--when we're not on the Web.

The farm bill: Yogurt and sausage

Yogurt carton: In the time it takes to eat this yogurt, ten acres of U.S. farmland will be lost to development.

Ag journalists these days are hearing from all corners of society on what policies should gain fashion in the new farm bill. Just about every day I hear from one advocacy group or another.

Last week, I got a note from Stonyfield Farm, a maker of organic yogurt, which is touting farmland protection on the top of its yogurt carton. Stonyfield is partnering with Environmental Defense in lobbying Congress and the media about farm bill policies that "help preserve open spaces and provide a healthier environment."

In another e-mail, I learn that Environmental Defense Farm Policy Campaign Director Scott Faber has launched a blog called "The Ruminant" to criticize the current farm bill direction.

Other messages in my e-mail box this week:

* The Cato Institute is launching a new "web resource," advocating the downsizing of USDA, which it says is beholden to "large agribusiness firms," and draining the federal budget.

* Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, says that Congress is ignoring "a golden opportunity to update our farm policies," citing "outdated, wasteful programs."

* The American Farmland Trust claims that the House Agriculture Committee is "failing miserably in the farm bill debate."

* John Bianchi and Maria Corredor of Goodman Media International, Inc., argue on behalf of "forty consumer, environmental, farmer and animal welfare groups" who are critical of a farm bill provision that "wipes out critical state and local authority to protect food safety, the environment, and humane animal treatment."

This is just one week's slice of the sausage making that is the farm bill debate.

And, things are just getting started, according to a recent Agriculture Online story, House subcommittee approves commodity title extension.

But, reading this story don't you get the feeling that the established forces in agriculture are still quite comfortably holding sway in Washington? It will be interesting to see if the new faces from outside of ag will gain much of anything from all their lobbying efforts.

Having followed these policy debates a few times already, something tells me it's going to be business as usual once the digital ink stops flowing and the sausage is in its skin.

The winds sure do blow

Has it been a windy year where you live? It's been blowing hard here in central Iowa for a couple days now, but this whole late winter and spring has been breezy, punctuated by high winds and storms. I lived in central Kansas for a few years way back when, and this year Iowa seems a lot like the land of Oz, wind blowing for days on end and all through the night.

In Kansas and elsewhere in the plains states this week, very strong winds halted wheat harvesting. Farmers tell me that they've had trouble with spraying operations because of the constant blowing.

I asked Harvey Freese, Freese-Notis Weather, this morning about whether we've been experiencing an unusually windy year.

"Yes, it seems like we have experienced a number of powerful storms this spring," he said. "The blizzard in early March comes to mind right away. Heavy snows fell across western Iowa, the blizzard blew for days with wind gusts at or near 50 mph. Traffic statewide came to a standstill as the Interstates were closed due to the heavy snow and unrelenting wind."

"The next storm that comes to memory occurred in early April, strong cold winds blew across the Midwest bringing very cold subfreezing air into the midwest, which did much damage to budding fruit trees and otherwise hardy spring flowers such as daffodills in Iowa. Seems like the cold windy weather blew continuously for a number of days in the Deep South.

"The wind-driven cold was so unusual there were numerous just-planted fields of corn in parts of southern Missouri and Illionis where considerable freeze damage was occurred. Some say as much as 7% of the early planted crops were affected. In Kansas, jointing wheat was severely damaged in central Kansas because of the late cold snap, driven south by strong northerly winds.

"And now again, in early June, another very strong wind has been associated with an intense storm moving across the Dakotas. Overnight temperatures remained in the 70s and early this morning winds were gusting up to the mid 30s in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

"Makes we wish I had a shares in a wind farm," Harvey concluded.

7,000 years of farming

Field of clean-cultivated winter wheat in Washington State brought two hundred tons soil loss per acre. Photo by F.A. Mark

I took a drive into the hills of western Iowa this weekend, and saw some of the worst soil erosion I've seen in a long time. Heavy rains on exposed soils have really taken a toll on some fields, especially those that appear to have just been brought into crop production this spring. I saw several fields that looked to be CRP ground or pasture that had been planted to row crops. Given the slope and the gulleys, it's hard to believe you could even drive a tractor safely on fields like that.

Farmers on Agriculture Online report similar sightings. Even with conservation practices in place, major damage has occured on sloping soils. In Crop Talk, one Iowa farmer said, "I have some of the worst erosion we have ever had. It starts at the base of the terraces and is anywhere from 10 to 15 feet wide all the way to the bottom and 3 inches deep."

A couple weeks ago, Agriculture Online Correspondent Roy Smith wrote a piece, 7,000 years of farming, based on his reading of the pamphlet, "Conquest of the Land Through 7000 Years."

Roy wrote, "The reason that my attention was drawn again to this publication is that eastern Nebraska has suffered severe erosion from two very hard rain storms in the last month. I can look out my office window and see evidence of permanent damage done to the soil from these two rains of four inches each in less than two weeks. Such rains are common in this area, coming at least once in five years. As I look at the fields in my neighborhood, I wonder if some day they will look like the pictures of fields in the Middle East and North Africa shown in the pamphlet."

Roy, a seasoned Nebraska farmer, goes on to bemoan the way that "conservation has fallen by the wayside" in our modern era of agriculture.

I hear ya, Roy....

Now who's knocking ethanol?

Clayton Rye, Iowa farmer and ethanol investor

A front-page story in The New York Times yesterday cited oil industry executives as claiming that ethanol is “seen as [a]deterrent to expanding refineries.” The oil people are reported to have told Congress that as a result of increased ethanol production, oil refinery expansion plans have been put on the back burner, and that as a result current high prices for gas could become a long-term problem.

Ethanol, for all its promise as an alternative fuel source, seems to attract plenty of detractors these days--big oil, environmentalists, and assorted academics among them. Out here in Iowa, a lot of this controversy can seem pretty baffling. We thought we were maybe doing the world some good.

So, on same day as the Times story, it was good to hear from one of our Agriculture Online correspondents, Clayton Rye. Clayton farms near Hanlontown, Iowa, which he likes to point out is midway between Minneapolis and Des Moines, as well as home of Sundown Day on June 21.

In Clayton's piece, Ethanol detractors, he certainly admits his biases:

"Yes, I am a corn grower and yes, not only am I an ethanol investor, I also have an ethanol plant across the road from me that has been producing ethanol since 2004. The almost nonstop sound of the corn grinders is part of my everyday life."

Clayton's not real happy with the 30,000-foot view that too many folks take of the issues surrounding ethanol production:

"I would say to any writer who wants to tell all the facts on the impact and future of ethanol, especially to those writers on the East and West Coasts, that if you are going to write about corn production in Iowa...come out here and get your hands dirty with the rest of us. It means you will also have to get out of your car."

Clayton believes a lot of the criticism of ethanol is based on "threadbare, hackneyed arguments that are circulated like so much old gossip."

I invite you to come on over to Agriculture Online, get out of your car, and roll the cob with Clayton Rye for a while. I'm sure he'd be glad to talk with you about ethanol.

Corn high? Just watch....

There's some law in physics that says that matter observed is matter changed. If you watch some photon, it behaves differently.

In the same vein, when I was a kid I used to think that by listening to radio broadcasts of my beloved Cleveland Indians I could help them win. (Actually, deep down I still think that.) Is it possible to believe the markets work the same way--that when we watch them and cheer for them to go up, well, they just might.

Or maybe it takes people working both sides of the fence? That's the case with a new poll on Agriculture Online: What will be the highest 2007 corn price? It takes two to make a market; there are both optimists and pessimists:

Commenting on the poll, an Iowa farmer writes: "Corn plantings will soon be completed and the anticipated bumper crop will become a reality to the gurus at USDA. BTW the soybean futures may benefit from the over-planting of corn. However, that may well be a temporary phenomenon as the bean price may well collapse in sympathy with the declining corn market. In the end, we will produce too much of everything."

On the optimistic side of things, a Minnesota farmer chimes in: "My 'Ouija Board' says we are going to have a hot, dry July....so $5.50. The Stars say great weather from here out so $3.50. It is obviously up to the weather. But next winter we will have round two of the "Battle for the acres," so don't expect any 2 in the front number for the price of corn or 6 in the front number for the price of beans. This is an unprecedented demand market. So expect ups and downs, but don't expect low prices for several years minimum."

What's your guess? Take the poll, and see if you can help change the matter.

Switching to switchgrass

Leaders of the Chariton Valley Biomass Project, which is developing technologies for harvesting and processing switchgrass for energy.

In an Agriculture Online story yesterday, Business Editor Dan Looker reported that Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is making the case for switching some federal farm program funds to support production of crops for cellulosic ethanol. Harkin is looking at a plan that would give direct payments to farmers for crops like switchgrass, a native tallgrass prairie species that has been planted on a lot of Conservation Reserve Program acres.

We planted switchgrass on our Nebraska farm some 20 years ago, and aside from some encroachment by cedar trees, maintaining the stand has mainly meant letting nature take its course. Still I've wondered what will happen to the stand when our CRP contract comes to an end. Would I really want to return those highly erodible acres to row crops? Wouldn't it be logical to find a commercial use for the grasses, which are perfectly suited to the soils and climate of Buffalo County, Nebraska.

Harkin's proposal notwithstanding, cellulosic ethanol has at least one big hurdle to clear--the farm-level technology for harvesting, storing and and handling bulky plant materials like switchgrass.

It's encouraging, though, that there is work already underway to make the dream of cellulosic biofuels practical at the grassroots.

Check out this slideshow by Successful Farming Managing Editor, Gene Johnston:

A look at the future of growing biofuel crops

Take a look at that equipment. Switching to switchgrass is more than a policy maker's pipe dream.

Sinking and swimming in soybean oil

Central Iowa Energy's new 30-million gallon biodiesel facility near Newton, Iowa (photo by Dan Looker).

Dan Looker, who in my view covers biofuels issues as well as anyone in the business, walked into my office last Thursday with a just bit of an attitude, and some self-deprecating humor. We had been less than prompt in posting his new story on the opening of a new biodiesel plant in Iowa. The $20 million facility near Newton is "one of the largest and most efficient biodiesel plants in the nation," Dan wrote. But a big question mark hangs over the facility and the whole industry, in fact.

Anyway, Dan clearly had enjoyed working on the story and was eager to see it online. It had been filed late in the afternoon, but wasn't posted until early evening. We should have had it live in ten minutes. If you follow this industry at all--as a farmer, investor, or consumer of biofuels, it's certainly a must-read story.

Dan captures the central issue of the day in this fledgling business: "The soybean oil that can make up to about 80% of a typical plant's production costs is approaching record prices, at a time when the soybean crushing industry is almost swimming in a record supply of oil."

The law of supply and demand has taken an odd twist here, one that Dan follows with the clear eye of a great reporter.

Check it out on Agriculture Online: Will biodiesel flounder in a sea of soybean oil?

Soybean rust wakes up early

USDA Observation Map 5/11/2007

This morning, several editors here were planning the next issue of the High Yield Team newsletter. That project aims to help soybean growers get good information on improving yields. Soybean rust seems to have had little play in the farm press so far this spring, after a couple years of intense coverage. One of our group piped up and asked what we might say about rust, if anything, in the newsletter. I have to confess that the rest of us all just sort of shrugged our shoulders.

A couple hours later, we're breaking a significant rust story on our affiliated Web site, stopsoybeanrust.com.

The story reports on the first Asian soybean rust finding of 2007 in Louisiana. There have been 20 other findings of soybean rust in four other states so far this year. The significance of today's report, though, is that the finding is 53 days ahead of last year's first find in the state, and that Louisiana proved to be a source of rust for the Mid-South and Midwest last year, according to Clayton A. Hollier of Louisiana State University.

Hollier said the same sort of northward movement could occur this year, "especially if the weather is wetter than last year’s."

In the meantime, recent rains and predicted showers likely will produce more development of soybean rust in Louisiana, Hollier said.

Stay tuned. We're writing about rust early.

Farmers on a higher wire

From a journalist's perspective, since last fall it's been easy to sense a whole new optimism in agriculture. The biofuels boom has a lot to do with it, of course.

Cash corn prices in my home town hit $4.00 this winter, compared to a three-year average of about $2.00. Farmers and agribusiness people I met at the Commodity Classic meeting in February (corn, soy and wheat growers) all were talking about new technology and expansion. Only a year ago the talk was all cost-cutting and status quo.

But this new era, if that's what it is, also has raised the balancing act of farming to a higher wire. Some farmers view this year as a once-in-lifetime opportunity to make some real money. Costs for fuel, land rents, and other inputs are rising. And, the weather this spring isn't cooperating in a lot of places.

Along with the higher expectations, there's more tension in the air this spring. According to a new poll in Agriculture Online, more than half of farmers rate this year as a more stressful than normal.

Stress can come in a variety of forms--weather and other Acts of God, red tape, family matters, you name it. Writing in response to the poll, an Indiana farmer said:

"Seed all burnt up with barn fire last week, but didn't lose equipment and no injuries. Hope to start planting Sat., which would put us at normal pace. Insurance forms are a real treat. Dad wants brother and me to buy 160 ac at 1/2 price so he can start a non-ag business, but still $160/ac for 30 yrs. Neither of us own ground to spread cost over, so what to do. Town job is stressful. So I just go to the woods and look for mushrooms, but that isn't going well either."

Oh, the eternal verities of agriculture....

Weather forecasting: Every molecule in its place

If I had been planting corn in central Iowa this weekend, the forecast on Saturday held hope that I'd be back in the field by Sunday--only a 29 percent chance of rain. It rained off and on all day.

Of course, it's something of a national past-time to second guess the weather man. But farmers can make better decisions themselves if they know a more about what goes into making a forecast, one ag meteorologist told Agriculture Online.


"One thing I feel that the National Weather Service does not convey well to the public is that different forecasts have differing levels of confidence," says Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the USDA Joint Agricultural Weather Facility. "When a weather pattern is 'locked in,' forecasts out to a couple of weeks can be quite accurate. Other times, when the atmosphere is in transition, forecasts beyond a few days are fraught with error."

Farmers can look at computer models to determine whether a forecast is high or low confidence, Rippey says. A popular Web site to view a model output:

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis

All the new technology notwithstanding, consider the challenge of a weather forecast. Rippey puts it this way: "...the purpose of a short-range forecast it to try to determine the exact position of every molecule of air and water vapor in our atmosphere. After a few days, chaos (such as the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings) undermines those efforts."

Weather worries: Farmers wait to plant and replant

On Sunday afternoon, north of Des Moines, Iowa, farmers might have been scratching their heads over the weather forecast. On Saturday, at least one weather service called for only a 29% chance of rain on Sunday, and with the wind blowing all day Saturday, the weekend weather seemed ready to let farmers back in the field.

Instead, on Sunday, planters were tucked away in machine sheds and farm yards, and some rigs, like the one pictured here north of Ankeny, were stranded in the field, as more rain fell into the late afternoon.

Lingering rains had rigs like this one north of Des Moines, Iowa, going nowhere on Sunday.

In a poll on Agriculture Online, about one third of farmers say they have less than 25% of their corn planted. Today's Crop Progress report will pinpoint the delays further, but estimates last Monday showed corn planting at 24% completed, almost half the 42% five-year average.

It was a soaking weekend in general for the western Corn Belt -- eight and a half inches of rain in Aberdeen, South Dakota, six inches in Omaha. On Monday morning, widespread, locally heavy rain was still falling in eastern Kansas and western Missouri.

"We were close to being done [planting corn] in northeast South Dakota, but with 10 inches in a couple of days everything around here is flooded and looks terrible," one farmer told Agriculture Online. "At our farm I have never seen that much water floating around."

Even for those farmers with corn planted, the wet weather has brought a new concern: replanting. "Here in southeast Nebraska, we had gully washers last night with more to come today and tomorrow," a farmer reported in Agriculture Online Crop Talk. "Doesn't look good for the approximately 50% planted."

The National Weather Service six- to 10-day outlook for May 12-16 calls for above-normal temperatures and below-normal rainfall nearly nationwide, USDA reported Monday.

But, the window of opportunity for drying fields may be limited in some areas, says Freese-Notis Weather.

"Whatever corn acreage is shown as unplanted in this afternoon's Crop Progress report for Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Kansas, one really wonders when a lot of that acreage will have a chance to dry out enough for such planting to get done," said Craig Solberg in his Agriculture Online weather report Monday.