How Ironic: Global Warming Drought hits Alabama Corn Growers in Expected High-profit Year
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Drought hits Alabama Corn Growers in Expected High-profit Year
MOBILE, Ala. (AP) - A spring drought coming after an extremely dry
winter in Alabama is threatening farmers' plans to cash in on high
corn prices driven up by the biofuel boom.
North Alabama has the driest conditions in a half-century, but there's
a rain deficit statewide, according to state climatologist Doctor John
Christy at the University of Alabama-Huntsville.
Even usually wet Mobile has a rain deficit of about ten inches since
January.
Many farmers decided the 4-dollar-a-bushel corn price - double last
year's price, thanks partly to the growing ethanol industry - was
worth rotating away from cotton this year. But farm experts said with
an April first corn-planting target, the lack of rain could change
those crop plans.
Cotton, planted later, requires less moisture to survive. Buddy
Adamson, a cotton expert at the Alabama Farmers Federation, said
Alabama growers planted nearly 575-thousand acres of cotton in 2006
and were expected to scale back to about 425-thousand acres this year.