News release issued November 7, 2000, effective immediately.
For media inquiries, contact Caroline Booth Lara, Communications Specialist, (580) 224-6379.
  email: cblara@noble.org

Rain Brings Relief for Oklahoma Agriculture

ARDMORE -- For most Oklahoma agriculturalists and homeowners, the recent heavy rains in October and early November were a godsend. For a few, they proved to be an annoyance, or perhaps worse. For all, the rain brought a radical departure from the heat and drought that gripped the region from July through September.

"There are pros and cons, but for the most part, it's a breath of life for Oklahoma agriculture," said Dan Childs, an agricultural economist with the Ardmore-based Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. "Parts of the region have had below normal growing season rainfall since 1996, and we're just glad the drought is over."

For livestock producers, "It's all a plus," Childs added. "For the producers who run stocker cattle on winter pasture, it's going to help them have some feed and grazing in the winter. It should increase the profitability quite a bit if we can develop winter pasture from these rains."

The rains, though beneficial for winter pasture, fell too late to be of any substantial help to most warm-season grasses, according to Noble Foundation forage specialist Hugh Aljoe.

"If it stays mild, we might be able to have a few more growing days, but we'll still be down about 50 percent on our fall-phase pasture production," Aljoe explained. "Winter growing conditions could be good if the weather stays mild. The main benefits will be for winter pasture and for rebuilding our reserve water supply for livestock. A lot of the stock ponds were just mud holes. It won't take much more to fill all the stock ponds that haven't been filled already."

"Another plus for livestock producers is that cattle that may have lost body condition during the summer months will have a chance to regain condition, which will be critical to winter nutrition needs and reproductive performance," said Clay Wright, Noble livestock specialist. "These same conditions have enhanced winter annual forage growth."

The optimism over the prospect of better winter pasture production has boosted buyer demand, resulting in increases of $3 to $6 per hundredweight for wheat pasture cattle.

Another potential benefit, Wright said, involves pastures which were left ungrazed for most of the summer due to depleted water supplies. Those pastures, he said, could provide another grazing resource because of additional growth during the last several weeks.

On the downside, continued wet weather could increase disease problems for calves and stocker cattle.

"Wheat farmers should also see generally positive results from the rain. The prospects for a good grain wheat crop look very good," Childs added.

Peanut producers, on the other hand, are facing harvest delays due to the waterlogged soils. "It's been a month since the October 9 freeze, so this hurts the local peanut producers," Childs said.

Cotton harvest in southwest Oklahoma was well under way before the heavy rains began, according to Childs. "The rain could reduce the grade for those producers who don't have their cotton harvested yet," he said.

The impact of the heavy rains on fruit production depends on the environments in which the trees grow, noted Noble Foundation horticulturist Dooly Barlow.

"If the tree is on sandy soil, the heavy rain is a blessing. If it's on clay soil in a poorly drained area, the tree could drown out. Too much water covering the soil around fruit trees stresses them, just like drought causes stress in the summer," Barlow said.

The excessive rains could slow pecan harvests in some areas. Every day the pecans are not harvested by humans, animals will remove a portion of the nut crop. And in places where pecan trees grow in flood plains, an overflowing stream can literally wash the nuts away from the orchard floor, Barlow added.

The autumn rains will have little impact on shade trees, Barlow said, because the damage was already done during the summer.

If your lawn is greener now than it was in June, that's no surprise, Barlow said, noting that bermudagrass growth in the last half of October was substantial in many areas.

"The wet ground makes it difficult to mow," he added. "What we should do when the ground dries enough to mow is to set the blade at one-and-a-half to two inches. What we want is for the grass to be healthy and growing going into winter."

In terms of soils, the torrential rains that pelted parts of the region have caused some erosion problems and might have leached some nitrogen below the root zone, but few if any other adverse affects should occur, according to soils specialist Jerry Rogers.

"The only complaint I've heard from a producer is that he wasn't able to get his nitrogen applied because of the wet soils," Rogers said. "In general, the fertilizer should have been applied earlier, and most producers did that."

For wildlife, the impact of the rain should be all positive, according to Grant Huggins, a Noble Foundation wildlife specialist.

"This year's young are old enough to fend for themselves, so there shouldn't be any problem with drowning or hypothermia," he explained. "The rain has stimulated winter annuals, which are food sources for a lot of wildlife. The newly flooded areas are perfectly timed to attract migrating waterfowl, as well."

For regional fisheries — particularly small impoundments — the rain was "just what the doctor ordered," Huggins said.

"Oxygen was low because the water levels were so low — concentrating fish," Huggins said. "There may have been some loss of fish from ponds that overflowed, but grass carp are the only real concern. They like moving water and head for a stream when they get the opportunity. Overall, the increased water volume is a definite benefit."

With El Niño and La Niña gone by the wayside, Oklahomans can expect a more "normal" winter, most forecasters agree. If October and early November are any indication of things to come, it's going to be a wet winter across the southern Great Plains.

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Sidebar Story: Oklahoma Autumn Rainfall: How Much and Why?
Preview map of OK rainfall (20k gif)
Download full-size gif map of OK rainfall (84 k gif)
Download full-size tiff map of OK rainfall (3.1 MB tiff)

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The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, headquartered in Ardmore, Okla., is a non-profit organization conducting agricultural, forage biotechnological, and plant biology research; providing grants to numerous non-profit charitable, educational and health organizations; and assisting farmers and ranchers through educational and consultative agricultural programs.

To learn more, check out the Noble Foundation Web site at http://www.noble.org.

More news releases available at www.noble.org/Press_Release