This year’s spring agriculture season is shaping up to be pretty good, local agriculture officials said.

There has been no hail damage to crops this year, and recent rains have helped break what was an incredibly dry trend, county agent for the LSU Extension Service in Concordia Parish Glen Daniels said.

The area is lucky because a recent freeze didn’t do any damage, either, he said.

Adams County also escaped freeze damage, Adams County extension agent David Carter said.

An upswing in market prices is encouraging farmers to plant, Daniels said.

“Right now, we have more than 70,000 acres of corn planted,” he said. “(Farmers) can’t afford not to plant corn.”

“All that we have to hope for is that we don’t have a hurricane,” Daniels said.

Because of its market price, corn has also been planted in abundance in Mississippi.

“I think that it’s good that the farmers finally get a chance to be productive,” Carter said.

“We’ve got more corn planted this year than we have since the 1960s.”

An unexpected downside to corn’s popularity is that it is driving up feed prices for the animal markets.

“A lot of that corn is going to ethanol,” Carter said. “Not much of it is going to animal feed.”

Last year presented a lot of problems to farmers, Daniels said.

Unlike now, this time last year had only mediocre prices, he said.

“We also had a lot of problems with red banded stinkbugs,” he said.

Environmental stress also played a role in last year’s lackluster performance.

“It got so hot that the soybeans dropped early and tried to bloom,” Daniels said.

Dry, hot weather has some in the timber industry concerned, Carter said.

“A lot of people think that trees are dying because it’s been a dry month, but it’s because of long-term effects,” he said.

“Like anything else, that cycles, too.”

One problem that farmers have faced in the past that has Daniels concerned is soybean rust.

Soybean rust is an airborne spore that — once it has infected a plant — will eventually kill the infected plant if left untreated.

“Right now, it’s found in Texas, and it’s only a matter of time before we get the right wind flow to bring it over here,” he said.

Daniels said he is recommending a rust fungicide to area farmers.