You can tell how resilient most farmers are within a few minutes of starting a conversation with them. No matter how desperate the situation, they let you know they are ready to roll the dice on another season.

Byron Seward, who farms with his son, Darrington, in Louise, Miss., has faced plenty of adversity in 2020, including trying to make sure Seward and Son’s 20 employees are safe from COVID-19.

“It started raining again last October, and we have hardly had enough dry weather since to begin planting,” Seward said in late April. His farming operation includes land in the south Delta that has been flooded since last spring. “It isn’t as bad as last year, but we still have land under water on Highway 14 between Louise and Anquilla.”

It’s not a matter of waiting for a few fields to dry out for the Sewards. They farm 16,000 acres, which is down from what they once planted because of changes in the farm bill and tax laws.

About 5,000 of those acres were supposed to go into corn as part of their crop rotation strategy. That’s unlikely now because the prevented planting date for corn for his area is April 25, which was only four days away when Seward was interviewed.

“Normally, we shift to planting cotton and soybeans around May 1,” he noted. “If we have some dry weather, we could plant about 8,000 acres of cotton. The balance will be planted in soybeans.”

Related:Byron Seward: 2017 Delta High Cotton Award winner

Similar conditions last spring meant they finished planting cotton on May 29. He would rather not have to do that in 2020 because of the negative impact on yield.

Cotton, corn and soybeans

The Sewards focus on cotton, corn and soybeans. The acres they shed in downsizing were planted mainly in soybeans and a little rice. Soybean profitability had been erratic for the Sewards as overall farm operating costs increased and soybean prices decreased.

Rice was a problem because they never seemed to be able to plant it by April 1. “That’s the ideal time for planting rice and soybeans in this area, but it rarely worked for us,” Byron said.

The reduced acreage — they were farming more than 24,000 acres when Byron Seward was named the High Cotton winner for the Delta region in 2017 — means they will be farming their own land in 2020.

As if excessive rainfall wasn’t enough of a problem, a tornado came through the south Delta on Easter Sunday. It was one of a series of storms that swept through the South from Texas to Maryland. At least 37 deaths were attributed to the storms, according to the National Weather Service.

“The tornado knocked over one end of a center pivot and blew some trees down around our office south of Louise,” he said. “We’ve been working to clean that up.”

Related:Mid-South cotton specialists preach patience

Although Louise is in rural Mississippi, there have been cases of persons testing positive for Covid-19 in Humphreys County. No deaths had occurred in the area from C0VID-19 through April 21.

“We have some really good guys working for us, and I don’t want anything to happen to them or their families,” he said. “Everyone is worried about the coronavirus. We’ve been following the rules by not having more than one person in a truck and limiting exposure to each other as much as possible.”

Equipment dealers, suppliers

Most equipment dealers and input suppliers in the area are asking customers to remain outside or in the doorway of their businesses when they pick up parts or supplies.

“You can order ahead by phone or stand in the doorway and tell them what you need, and they’ll bring it out to the truck,” he said. “We hope things get opened up again in May so we can start to get back to normal.”

At one time the Sewards farmed nearly 35,000 acres in partnership with the Harris Family in Louise and in Coahoma County, Miss. Changes in the 2018 farm bill required that members of a farm operation had to be closely related to qualify for farm program payments. The Sewards and Scott Harris weren’t, so they dissolved their partnership.

New rules regarding like-kind exchanges of equipment also played into the situation. After Scott Harris retired, the Sewards reduced the size of their farming operation to the current 16,000 acres.

Byron Seward, who learned about computers and what they could accomplish while serving in the U.S. Army in 1971 and 1972, became an early adopter of precision farming techniques.

He began making variable rate fertilizer applications more than 25 years ago when fields had to be flagged by hand and the fertilizer applicator had to be turned on and off manually to change the rate with different soil types.

In the years since, he and Darrington have worked with companies like Delta Telephone, Sanders and Helena to bring more and more precision farming applications to their operation.

Yield and soil maps

Julian Crawford, the Seward’s agronomist, now writes prescriptions for fertilizer applications using yield and soil maps for each field with the AgriIntelligence software developed by Helena. They can also apply herbicides variable rate depending on the weed history and soil types in those fields.

They use computers or iPads to monitor the tractors, sprayers, combines and center pivots on their farm remotely. They can determine which field the equipment is in, how efficiently the equipment is performing and how much fuel is left in the tractors and combines without going to the field.

Along with the frustrations of having so much precision farming technology at your fingertips — that you can’t use because fields won’t dry — growers are being confronted with falling commodity prices brought on by the tariff wars and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on markets.

“The tariffs and low commodity prices and now this problem with too much rainfall is putting a lot of pressure on farmers,” Seward said. “I think all farmers are going to do the best they can in this situation. They’re ready to go if we can just get some dry weather. That’s what we’re all hoping for.”