Rainfall fell on Nebraska nearly every day in May.
“We had a cool wet May,” said sugarbeet grower Kevin Hall, 51, of Bridgeport, Neb.
Bridgeport is the county seat of Morrill County, and its population was 1,545 at the 2010 census.
“Bridgeport usually averages around 13, 14 inches a year of rainfall,” Hall said. “We had 13 in the month of May.”
Residents in the capital city of Lincoln, 364 miles to the east had it worse. The May with the most rain ever in Lincoln was also the wettest on record for the contiguous United States, according to federal meteorologists.
The Lincoln Airport recorded 10.9 inches of rain in May, the bulk of it—6.73 inches—falling in a two-day deluge that led to significant flooding early in the month.
Lincoln’s former record for May of 10.72 inches had stood since 1903, and no month saw more rain than May 2015 in the last 21 years. Lincoln added another 1.92 inches of rain in the first week of June.
On average 4.36 inches of rain and snow—mostly rain—fell over the Lower 48 in May, sloshing past October 2009, which had been the wettest month in U.S. records dating to 1895.
By his calculations, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientist Jake Crouch said that comes to more than 200 trillion gallons of water in May.
Crouch said the record was triggered by a stalled pattern of storms that dumped massive amounts of rain in the central U.S., especially in Texas and Oklahoma, which had their rainiest months.
Colorado had its rainiest May on record. Nebraska, Arkansas and Utah had their second wettest month on record.
All that water made it a little tougher for Hall this growing season.
“We’ve been wet and cold and the beets are behind,” he said on June 16. “We have pretty decent stands yet, but we are definitely a few weeks behind right now.”
Applying nitrogen to the soil made up for some of the nitrogen that was leeched down.
“We’re on mostly sandy soils, so there isn’t a lot else we can do,” Hall said. “We just lost time and heat units. We need a really good summer. We can still have a good crop. But we’re definitely behind the eight ball now.”
Born Farmer
Hall is a board member of the Nebraska Sugarbeet Growers Association. He runs Hall Ag with his wife, Vickie. They have two sons, Chance, 22, and Kaden, 18, and one daughter, Payton, 21.
“My oldest boy is on the cattle side of it,” Hall said. “He likes the cattle. He helps on the farm, but he’s more on the cow/calf operation.”
Payton is a senior at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Kaden will be a freshman there this year.
Nephew Leander Hopkins assists Hall on the farming side. Hall grows about 2,600 acres of beets on his spread of 7,500 acres. Rotation crops are corn, edible beans, wheat and alfalfa.
Vickie serves as the chief financial officer.
“She does all the bookkeeping,” Hall said. “She takes care of all that.”
They celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on June 23.
Hall has farmed far longer than that.
“I started on my own in 1982,” he said. “My parents and my grandparents were farmers.”
His parents, George and Jeannette Hall, live about five miles down the road from him.
“My parents definitely helped me,” Hall said. “When I first got out of high school I didn’t go to college. He let me borrow some machinery. I actually rented my grandfather’s farm, and I worked for my dad. He let me use his machinery. We just worked together for many, many years. He’s retired now. Without my parents it would have been pretty tough to get started and get going.”
Choosing a career in agriculture was easy.
“I never wanted to do anything else,” Hall said. “I really enjoy it. It’s a lot of work, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”
Snow help
Beet planting finished around April 25. Early harvest follows in mid-September with regular harvest in early October.
“We did have a cold snap around Mother’s Day,” Hall said. “It got pretty cold a couple nights, but because of snow cover we had very few replants. I was fortunate enough I didn’t have to replant any beets, but it was close to 10 percent replant in this area.”
Growers who did replant had trouble because it got so wet.
Last harvest Hall averaged a little more than 29 tons per acre and 17.4 percent sugar content.
“Two years prior to that we were a little over 30 ton,” Hall said. “The sugar bounces around a little bit. Two years ago we had really poor sugar, but we usually average close around to that 17 for an average.”
His beets are processed at the Western Sugar Cooperative Factory in Scottsbluff, about 35 miles away.
Some of his beets will be processed at the Western Sugar factory in Torrington, Wyo., about 66 miles away for the final time this season.
Western Sugar officials announced in May that it will shut down operations at the Torrington facility in 15-to-24 months.
“They’re going to increase the Scottsbluff factory,” Hall said. “It’s a good move for the company. I think it’s the right thing to do. It saves our company freight charges and adds efficiency to the Scottsbluff factory as they increase and improve it. I think it’ll be a positive for all growers.”
Hall’s longest beet haul is 50 miles, but most average around 30 miles.
“We direct-deliver all of our beets,” Hall said. “We do deliver some to the Bayard, Neb., receiving station about 15 miles away. We harvest 24 hours a day. Scottsbluff does not receive 24 hours a day. Bayard does.”
Learning to adapt
“We keep updating as we go along,” Hall said. “Four to five years ago I switched from 30-inch to 20-inch rows. Everything that we have is on 20-inch now.”
There has been a corresponding increase in crop yield.
“I know for sure I’ve had a yield increase in edible beans,” Hall said. “The University of Nebraska has done some studies that show there’s a yield increase for beets. I didn’t think there would be much change for corn, but I actually saw a 10 percent yield increase on the corn.
“A lot of factors go into changing the row size,” he said. “It’s easier to get a stand established with 20-inch rows, because they’re so much closer together. If we get a skip, it’s not as dramatic as on a 30-inch row. Harvesting with the Ropa self-propelled on a 20-inch row works very nice.”
Hall is entering his 10th season using the Ropa harvester and loading trucks on the end of the field.
Newer seed varieties have helped build up disease resistance.
“We don’t have a lot of issues there,” Hall said. “There is starting to be a little bit of Roundup resistant weeds. It isn’t anything major yet. With our rotational crops, we’re able to keep that in check with using other herbicides. I think we should be able to manage that one.
“But there is some kochia south of me,” he said. “There’s a little bit of kochia that’s starting to show up that is resistant. A lot of our beets are on three-year or four-year rotations. If we do our job right, we should be able to stay ahead of the resistance.”
The three-year rotation is made up of corn, beets and beans. The four-year rotation is corn, beans, wheat and then beets.
Water management determines which rotation is used.
“We have water allocations, and we put wheat in those areas where we’re short of water,” Hall said. “It’s hard to raise irrigated wheat with surface water, because we don’t get the water usually until the middle of May at the earliest and sometimes it’s the middle of June before we get the surface water in the ditch system.”
Hall is embracing no-till farming.
“I was very hesitant going to no-till,” Hall said. “I really like that. After being in it for three or four years, I believe it has actually helped my yield. No-till is the up and coming thing. It’s where we’re going.”
It also saves money on fuel and machinery costs.
“We had been minimum-till for years,” Hall said. “We went more heavily into no-till with 20-inch rows. Every year we try to get a little better at it. It’s a learning process. I really believe it’s the way to go.”
Hall uses center pivot irrigation mostly and some surface irrigation with water from the canal system that stretches along the North Platte River Valley from Guernsey, Wyo., to Bridgeport.
“We’re wet, wet right now,” Hall said. “We’ve got water running down the river system right now that’s clear full.”
Hall is optimistic about the future of the sugar industry.
“If you’re not optimistic, it’s an awful long painful journey in agriculture. We’re always going to have hurdles and challenges that we’re going to have to address. We have good representatives in Washington. There will be challenges and bumps in the road, but we’ll be fine.”