CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Some farmers are working overtime to get their crops out of the field due to the recent scorching heat.
Nueces County Extension Agent Jaime Lopez said farmers are racing to get their fields stripped of sorghum before it's too late to save.
Sorghum is a nutrient-rich grain commonly harvested and used to make cereals for human consumption.
"Some sorghum is starting to fall just because of the drought and heat; it's starting to kind of die off," Lopez said.
Cotton is also a popular crop among farmers. Lopez said that due to the intense heat, some farmers could end up in a bind.
"The majority of that cotton that was planted late right now appears that if we don't get rain pretty quick, it's probably going to be a failure," Lopez said.
Blake Weaver is a fourth-generation family farmer and has had more luck with grain than cotton this year.
"We are having an excellent grain crop, probably one of the best we've had in 10-plus years. It got too hot too early on for the cotton crop, so the cotton crop is going to be well below average," Weaver said.
The US Department of agriculture just put out its weekly crop report, and it shows that most crops around the state are not doing as well this year as they did last year. State Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said that our weather has hurt farmers this year.
"From one extreme to another. It was so dry last year that we didn't make much of a cotton crop just Texas, but now they're flooded out and permitted planning. We got so much rain in Hereford about 4,000 steers drowned in the feedlot," Miller said.
Weaver said he grew up in the farming business and it's what he liked to do, despite Mother Nature's unpredictability.