Farmers in southwest Alabama thought this might be their best peanut harvest yet. One farmer even had early yields of 5,600 pounds to an acre. Cotton farmers in the area were optimistic as well. That was before rainy weather set in and dumped nearly 16 inches of rain on some areas in the past month.Jimmy Kaiser, who works on Bill and Tommy Cleverdon’s farm in Bon Secour, said only 100 of the farm’s 450 acres of peanuts had been picked as of early November. With more rain forecast for that week, the outlook didn’t look good.”Some of our peanuts were planted late behind sweet corn and potatoes,” Kaiser said. “Those peanuts are still in the ground and will be okay if we get some dry days. But for the peanuts that were planted early, we’re loosing more of them every day. Normally, we’d have the majority of them picked by now.”The rain has caused peanut harvesting equipment to bog down in the heavy soils of southwest Alabama. One nearby field of peanuts had been inverted for nearly five weeks. The peanuts were almost black. Cotton farmers were in a similar fix. Rain-soaked cotton sagged from the plants in soggy fields. Some of the cotton fell to the ground with the weight of the rain. Much of the cotton that remained on the plant suffered from boll rot–or the cotton seeds inside the bolls had sprouted.”The cotton seed is sprouting in the boll, so you might as well say the cotton seed portion of our crop will be nil,” said Mobile County farmer Bert Driskell. “That also greatly reduces the quality of the cotton we’ll pick.”The situation is just as bad for peanut farmers.”Those are just about rotten by now,” Kaiser said as he looked across the road at his neighbor’s peanut field. “If it was dry enough to pick them, you’d lose most of them once the combine picks up the vines.”Once peanuts are dug, they require several days of drying before they are combined or picked. That’s where southwest Alabama has had most of it’s trouble, Kaiser said. “If we could combine them as soon as they were dug, there wouldn’t be a problem,” he said. “But we just haven’t had enough sunny days to get them dry enough to harvest.”Some farmers are even worse off, said Mark Kaiser, Jimmy’s cousin who operates a farm in nearby Summerdale with his father George.”There are some farmers who haven’t even been able to dig their peanuts because the fields have been so wet,” Mark said in early November. “They are in trouble too, because once the peanuts mature and the vines start to deteriorate, you really lose a lot of peanuts when you dig them. They are left in the ground.”Jimmy Kaiser estimates that some farmers in the area may loose as much as two-thirds of their crop because of the poor harvest conditions. He picked up a vine in his field, shook it and most of the peanuts fell to the ground.”Imagine how many you lose when that machine grabs it and shakes it,” he said still holding the vine. “We’re leaving a lot of our crop on the ground or in the ground. We thought this might be one of the best crops yet, and it’s turning out to be the opposite because we can’t get the crop out of the field.”Peanut farmers know the damage will be excessive in some areas. Not just from the recent rains, but from the dry weather suffered in other areas of the state earlier in the summer.Executive Director of the Alabama Peanut Producers Association Randy Griggs said southeast Alabama peanut farmers had weather woes, too, but not to the extent of those in Mobile and Baldwin counties.”Southeast Alabama has had a wet fall, too, but hasn’t received nearly as much rain as southwest Alabama,” Griggs said. “Most of the harvest in the Wiregrass is complete, but the rain did cause some reduction in the quality and yields of the peanuts there. “Griggs said the APPA is urging the U.S. House and Senate to approve a Crop Assistance Bill to provide some relief from the weather extremes that have plagued this year’s crops. The bill should provide assistance to producers who had crop disasters in 2001 or 2002. The APPA has urged House and Senate members to take up the proposal during their lame-duck session following the election.Early predictions for cotton yields in southwest Alabama may be reduced by as much as 40 percent because of the excessive rainfall. That was the forecast in mid October. Even more rain has fell since then, only making bad matters worse.Cotton fields near the Gulf Coast were severely battered by Hurricane Isidore and subsequent weather fronts. Dr. Dale Monks, an agronomist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System, and Dr. Bob Goodman, an Extension agricultural economist, agree that much of the cotton in the area has suffered extensive damage.Jim Todd, Mobile County Extension coordinator, brought the two in to survey area fields to help determine if cotton farmers had significant agronomic and economic damages from wind and rain damage caused by Hurricane Isidore.”I visited a number of cotton fields in Mobile County within days of Isidore’s passing through,” said Todd. “In Mobile County, we were looking for a good harvest. Because of Isidore, farmers have had anywhere from 60 to 250 pounds of cotton per acre blown to the ground.”