ZEELAND, Mich. — Wildfire smoke blanketing the state of Michigan has dominated your news feed on Tuesday. Rightfully so. It's some of the worst we have ever seen.
Before the smoke, though, the drought was our biggest concern. Despite some recent rainfall, that problem persists.
After a wet start to the season in early April, the weather pendulum has swung the other way.
"Everything seemed to be good, and then Mother Nature kind of shut off the faucet," said Theresa Sisung, an industry relations specialist with the Michigan Farm Bureau.
Farmers, like Phil Visser of Visser Farms in Ottawa County, have been forced to find a way out of trouble.
“It's been very difficult knowing when and what to plant [and] how much to irrigate so we don't run out of water," he told FOX 17.
Visser Farms is fortunate. It's one of the few that uses irrigation, which they desperately need.
“It's pretty much 24 hours a day to keep the water going," Visser said.
Visser did admit he prefers these conditions compared to the opposite issue.
“Better to be dry and add water than to have it too wet and we can't take it off," he said.
Still, without the luxury of irrigation, and the ability to increase their water supply, so many other farmers seem to be fighting a losing battle.
“Things are not looking very good out there," Sisung said. "Hopefully we can have a bit of a shift in our pattern right now, and we can maybe start to see some rain. It's much needed.”
Between the months of April, May and June, West Michigan typically sees an average of 12 total inches of rain.
This year, we've only received a third of that target number.
In fact, during a 33-day stretch from May 9 to June 10, we only saw .05 inches of rain — barely a single drop.
"These crops, a lot of them, they take a certain amount of moisture in order to just germinate and make it out of the ground," Sisung said. "So we have some that the seed never germinated because it didn't have enough moisture. [For] others, these crops are just in 'trying to stay alive' phase, but they're not actually going to grow because all their energy is going into just staying alive.”
Even with the benefit of irrigation, Visser Farms can feel the pinch.
“Beans have come up quite unevenly," Visser said. "The sweet potatoes here — we lost quite a few of and had to replant.”
On a wider scale, Sisung said wheat is getting hit the hardest.
"We had a phenomenal-looking wheat crop this spring. Everything looked great, but we really started to get dry when we hit that critical flowering time. So when that plant is starting to put on yield is when we started to get dry.”
She added, "We thought we had a record wheat crop. I don't think there's any way we're going to get that. We're probably going to have shrunken kernels, if there are some kernels in some of the heads, and just overall a lower wheat crop, unfortunately.”
She said it's too early to know what the negative impact could be on the consumer, if any.
“They may have some localized issues where they struggled to find some things, but because of it being a national and a global marketplace, I don't think we'll see a huge impact on consumers unless we continue to stay dry," Sisung said. "If we continue to stay dry, then it could be more of a challenging few months.”
In the meantime, Sisung offered some ways you can help out the Visser family, and others farmers just like them.
“It's been my saying for weeks now: 'If you know a rain dance, do it. If you've been doing a rain dance, take a different one to do right now, because it hasn't seemed to help a whole lot.'”