It's either feast or famine in the South with respect to rainfall, and data from NOAA shows saturated soil in the region. Some in the area are saying it is one of the wettest Mays in a long time. Some areas have seen about a 50% increase or more in rain.
Chad Swindoll, owner and founder of J19 Agriculture LLC, is a farmer and agricultural consultant in northwestern Mississippi in an area known as the Delta. He said most soybeans and corn have been planted, but that corn hasn't been adequately fertilized or fertilized at all. He said cotton has largely not been planted yet and may not get planted.
"Most people I talk to have had about four days to actually work in the field in the month of May. Now, that doesn't mean that it's rained every four days. It's been too wet to get any machinery in the field. So, that can mean unable to plant, unable to spray, or unable to fertilize," Swindoll explained.
He said rising costs have also hurt farmers.
"You take an industry that's already very capital intensive with very thin margins, and then you apply those pressures to it. We're in a situation where you sit down and put a budget together, and on paper it's very difficult for the average farmer to cash flow positive the past few years. It’s not a good situation. There's been a lot of bankruptcies, and there's been a lot of farm auctions," Swindoll said.

Alex Deason is a regional coordinator for Mississippi State University Extension and said crop insurance is important and is tied to a certain window of time for planting.
Deason states, "They want the best chance for everything to be successful so that everybody's happy at the end of the day -- those that have to pay out, those that have to receive. Those windows are fairly generous, but then you get a year like this year. We haven't had that many planning windows, and the ones that we had have not been that long."