Spring weather created issues and current commodity prices raise concerns
Delta farmers had a positive spring beginning with great weather and plenty of planting time, but then the rains came and kept coming. This caused many farmers to replant some acreage, lose some acreage and cause wildly different yields across the board. Farmers across the area have been harvesting corn, rice, soybeans and cotton—each crop assuaged with problems ranging from pests, weather, and historically low commodity prices.
Corn
Mississippi State Extension Corn Specialist, Dr. Erick Larson, notes corn farmers had the best planting season due to the fact corn is generally planted first.
“In general, the corn planting went fairly well this past spring,” says Larson. “We had some planting windows in late March and Easter week primarily. And we had some days at the end of April, but after that we had no planting opportunities for the first three to four weeks in May. That affected all the crops planted after corn.”
Larson says the growing season was good, but there were plenty of problems.
“May and June were more abnormal weather wise and that caused problems with herbicide application and the rain did delay and restrict acreage, particularly in the Northeastern part of the state,” he says. “We had some speedling emergency issues associated with saturation or flooding, rootless corn syndrome, hail damage, delayed and restricted fertilizer and herbicide application. We had corn that had substantial nitrogen deficiency either because of application delays or extended soil saturation causing considerable losses.”
The list of problems continued.
“There was stunting due to soil compaction resulting from traffic when the soils were minted, and we had green snap problems,” says Larson. “It’s a strange phenomenon where corn stalks are snapped during the mid to late vegetative stages due to high winds. And that’s a problem because it always snaps below where the ear is going to be formed. Any stalks that snap are basically rendered barren. And that doesn’t happen very often, but when it does happen, it can have catastrophic yield loss because of that.”
However, Larson says corn had good yields, fairly equivalent to last year, which had high yields.
“The crop was good in the Delta and during the beginning of September, harvest was still going on in the North Delta,” he says “The yields are up and down and highly variable depending upon nitrogen-related issues.”
Corn acreage was up this season with 920,000 acres nearly doubling the 2024 planted acreage of 490,000, according to the USDA National Ag Statistic Service numbers.
“We haven’t had that high of acreage since 2007. In fact, we haven’t had over 900,000 acres since 1960,” says Larson.
Soybeans
With all of the planting problems which occurred during May, soybean acreage was down with 2.050 million acres planted. There were 2.3 million acres planted in 2024. Justin Calhoun, the Mississippi State Extension Soybean specialist, says it’s been a “very strange year.”
“We’ve had good harvest weather and everything has gone smoothly, which is what we needed,” says Calhoun. “But I’m afraid that the overall crop is going to be off pace of where we really want. I’ve talked to some farmers who were close to finishing in September and others still had a lot out there. It’s a really tough year. I’ve been called and asked about acreage reports and planning progress and now harvest progress. It is incredibly tough all the way around this year.”
Rice
Acreage decreased for rice as 155,000 acres were planted in 2024 and only 130,000 planted in 2025. Will Eubank, Mississippi State Extension Rice Specialist, explains rice farmers had more than enough problems to work through this growing season, and harvest is bearing them out.
“Harvest started the second week of August, maybe some people got in the first week of August,” says Eubank. “There were really good yields from early planting with good reports all across the board. RiceTec and Downing Grove’s Clearfield variety are showing really good yields. But then, as we moved into that later planting, the issues we had to deal with including drifting and heavy rains early in the spring, that’s when we started hearing some concerning things regarding yields.”
Delays in spreading herbicide and fertilizer compromised the later planted crops.
“It wasn’t necessarily just the rain,” says Eubank. “It was more the delays in herbicide application. That was kind of the big concern midway through the season. The main yield reducer has been the stem split or twin stem. It’s basically when the rice puts on a tiller at a nodal position, so you have nose up to the rice plant and it basically reduces your yield because that rice head that comes out of the nodal is so much later maturing and the rice is not putting as much effort into that main stem as it is into that split stem.”
The yields have varied with “the top end of the field typically is our yield limiting zone where we would expect to be 180 to 200 bushels, whereas in the bottom, where it’s supposed to be consistent, we’re hearing 100 to 150 bushels to the acre,” he says.
Pests were also a problem as a new rice pest, the Delphacid, has been found in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.
“It’s here,” says Eubank. “I don’t know if it’s here to stay, but it’s something we’re going to have to deal with, maybe not necessarily this year, just because we have some of our rice getting out of the field early so luckily in some cases it’s past that damaging stage.”
Cotton
Once King of the Delta turnrow, cotton was riding higher in 2024 with 520,000 acres planted but dipped to 360,000 for 2025. At press time, some harvest of cotton had begun according to Mississippi State Extension Cotton Expert, Brian Pieralisi.
“There’s a little bit of picking going on in the Delta just north of 82 in Tallahatchie County and Leflore County area,” says Pieralisi, “But not a whole lot. There’s a fair amount of defoliation going out. So, the very earliest planted, which was in late April, has been defoliated and is very near picking or being picked.”
The later planted cotton crops got in the ground in late May and June and should be ready for harvest in mid to late October, according to Pieralisi. He notes there were probably three plantings for cotton, spreading out the problems for each.
Mississippi State Extension’s Tyler Towles, Research Entomologist, Whitney Crow, Extension Entomologist, Don Cook, Entomologist and Tom Allen, Extension Plant Pathologist, have all been keeping an eye on pests in cotton fields. In a recent extension newsletter, they explained a new pest that has made its way to Mississippi.
“The two-spotted cotton leafhopper was found infesting cotton in Raymond (on September 8) and has been positively ID’d by entomologists with the Mississippi Entomological Museum. There is a lot that we do not know about this pest, so most of this information is coming from neighboring states. In high numbers, this pest can cause severe hopper burn to cotton leaves, which displays as yellowing, reddening, and browning of the leaves, similar to K deficiency. If severe enough, cotton can prematurely drop leaves, ultimately negatively impacting yield,” the newsletter said.
Farmers Talking Harvest
Adron Belk at Triple Run Farms in Sunflower County didn’t have to replant anything due to the wet spring. Belk has a 50/50 rotation with corn and soybeans and adds in some wheat, milo and sunflowers for production.
“It’s a pretty early crop,” says Belk. “We’re fairly blessed and we wish the prices would go up. Everything that we could control we did pretty good on this year.”
Victoria Darden farms in the south Delta in Onward has had to deal with rain and flooding this growing season.
“I got everything planted by April 30 and it was great until we had some backwater come up,” says Darden. “I really needed to replant but it didn’t dry out and give me the opportunity until it was way late. I was going to have some June and July beans but the weather did not cooperate so I took a loss on that and did not replant some of that backwater area that was about 200 acres.”