Pender County farmers dealing with too much water after weeks of drought

PENDER COUNTY, NC (WWAY) — Many farmers across the Cape Fear have been dealing with drought conditions this summer.

But now, many are dealing with another problem, too much water from recent rainfall, and the situation is not good.

After more than a month of drought and heat burn, excessive rainfall over the last couple of weeks, including Tropical Storm Debby last week, is causing problems for farmers.

In many fields, the soil is saturated and there’s standing water, making it hard for crops like corn, to reach maturity.

John Gurganus is the farm manager at Red Beard Farms.

He said he’d rather go back to having less water to deal with.

“Honestly, I’d rather go back to the drought at this point,” Gurganus said. “It was a lot easier for us cause we had, most of what we do is on irrigation. What’s really hurt us is the rain coming in and not stopping. That’s really been detrimental to our pepper patch and we just planted a second planting of squash and that’s, we’re starting to see some issues with that as well, disease pressure coming in.”

Mark Seitz is the Pender County Cooperative Extension director.

He said these conditions would make what was already a problematic growing season even more challenging for local farmers.

“And some of those kernels are starting to re-sprout on the ear,” Seitz said. “We’ve also got some fungal contamination, some mold building up in these ears. That’s going to affect the crop quality on an already rough crop because of the drought conditions.”

Seitz added that it is not known yet where farmers will be able to file for disaster relief funding following Debby, and even if farmers can get relief, it could take as long as 18 to 24 months before they might see any funds.