SCOTTSBURG, Ind. (WDRB) -- Dan Smith has to be resilient. The Scott County farmer has no other choice.
The soybeans he just harvested weren't the best ever, but he was just happy to have something to harvest at all.
"These are average, right here," he said, while thumbing through a handful of spare soybeans left on his field after harvest. "Some of them are put, you know, in soybean meal for cattle feed and stuff.
"I'm probably better pleased than what I thought I was going to be."
Dan Smith remains optimistic, despite a tough year of farming. (WDRB Photo)
2019 has been rough for Smith and others. Spring rains flooded farms across Kentuckiana. Then, the summer brought a long drought. Fluctuating commodity prices and a trade war with China haven't helped either.
"One extreme follows another," Smith said. "We got drowned in the spring, and then it just quit raining. Everybody said, 'Oh, just pray for it to quit raining.' I said, 'No, just slow down.'"
Smith, who's also president of the Scott County Farm Bureau, thinks farmers are going to need some kind of help from Washington.
A few soybeans remain on the field after harvest. (WDRB Photo)
"When you add all of it up, it's rough," he said.
Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles also thinks farmers might need some help. On Wednesday, he sent a letter to the federal government asking for disaster declarations in Kentucky County's suffering crop losses.
"The emergency loans made available will allow our farmers to extend credit while they try to recover from this drought," he wrote. "These loans allow them the ability to replace essential items such as equipment, livestock, or even the reorganization of their farming operation or to refinance certain debts."
While Kentucky can't yet quantify how severely yields will be affected, it feels there will be a noticeable impact.
A corn field outside Scottsburg. (WDRB Photo)
Despite the tough year, Kentuckiana farmers seem to be embracing a "half-glass-full" mentality and suggest the conditions here seem better than those in other parts of the country that were hit harder by weather extremes.
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