Global warming news: Cold weather and rain forces slow start to corn planting

Although Al Gore says "the Earth has a fever," try telling that to Midwestern corn farmers. The record-breaking and never-ending winter could damage orchards in the Midwest.

From AP:

ST. LOUIS — Most years about this time, northern Illinois farmer Monty Whipple, like so many Midwest growers, would be riding high in his monstrous planter, kicking up dust while sowing corn in hundreds of acres. But this spring has kept him sidelined, and he's anything but alone.

Spring planting across much of the nation's Corn Belt is sputtering, foiled by rainy and chilly conditions that in broad stretches have left the ground either too soggy or too cold for effective seeding.

As of Sunday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says, just 3 percent of the U.S. corn crop was sown, half the dismal pace of last year, when one of the wettest springs on record got farmers in many states off to the slowest start in decades.

In Illinois, just 1 percent of this year's corn has been planted — one-tenth of the average pace of the previous five years. Farmers in other key corn-producing states — Iowa, Nebraska and Indiana — were equally idle, the USDA says. Missouri has 9 percent of its crop in the field, down from 16 percent this time a year ago.

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