WILSON COUNTY, N.C. — In addition to the hot weather, the eastern part of North Carolina is also dealing with drought conditions, which are making things hard for farmers.

What You Need To Know

The eastern part of North Carolina is dealing with moderate to severe drought conditions

Brooks Barnes, a Wilson County farmer, says the lack of rain is causing leaves at the bottom of his tobacco plants to shrivel up

Barnes says a good 3 to 4 inches of rainfall would offer a lot of relief

Brooks Barnes is a second-generation farmer with about 3,000 acres in Wilson County. When he walks through some of his tobacco fields, he sees a lot of crunchy dry leaves at the bottom of the plants right now.

“They’re not supposed to be like that at all,” Barnes said. “This would be marketable product for us to sell, and it’s basically shot to crap. It’s no good.”

Barnes says they haven’t had measurable rain in over a month.

“It was a really nice spring until the last couple of weeks. Even two weeks ago the soil was getting dry, but we weren’t in terrible shape yet, but it’s getting kind of critical now,” Barnes said.

When he touches the dirt at the bottom of the tobacco plants, it easily brushes away.

“It’s just like baby powder. There’s no moisture there at all. See these roots here? There’s roots here. We just keep going down and down and there’s no moisture there,” Barnes said.

“We get a good rain and this tobacco for the most part it will recover. It will elongate these leaves. Right now when this tobacco is in full flower, this tobacco should be lapped in the middle. This leaf should be touching this one. You shouldn’t be able to see down these rows right now. If we get a good rain and give it 10 days, you’ll never know it,” Barnes said.

He planted soybeans in one of his fields, but you’d never know that because there are bare spots because some of the seeds didn’t get enough rain to germinate.

“It doesn’t matter how much it rains now. That seed right there is history. When it does rain I’m going to have to finish planting my crop, and plus I’m going to have to spot these places where they didn’t come up,” Barnes said. “The heat, in a way, is our friend. It’s also our enemy. The rain is the key.”

Corn is another crop that doesn’t do well in dry conditions. For the first time since 1974, Barnes’ family didn’t plant corn this year mostly because it was too risky with high fertilizer costs.

“Nitrogen, phosphorus and pot ash was so high, and I needed to have a really good yield for it to pencil out, but I guess it was the luck of the draw because the corn that is planted around the neighborhood is in terrible shape right now and I don’t see any way for it to have a really good yield,” Barnes said.

As any successful farmer will tell you, you have to take advantage of every opportunity that mother nature does offer.

“We got lucky and this is the only farm, out of all the wheat fields we have, this is the only farm that caught a rain on Sunday evening,” Barnes said. “See? Right there. We just planted these yesterday, and the bean is already sprouted. A couple more days, and it will be up out of the ground.”

Barnes says farming is like gambling, because there’s a lot of risk and luck involved when it comes to whether things will turn around.

“It’s pretty bad. It’s drier than I’ve seen it in a long long time, but it will rain. One day. I hope,” Barnes said.

Barnes says a good 3 to 4 inches of rainfall would help a lot, but he’s hoping that happens soon, because he says he really should have all his soybeans planted before July 4.