The menacing blazes eyed by highway cruisers shouldn’t be alarming.
Each year, farmers intentionally burn off their wheat fields to prepare for the next cycle of grain crops. The process, called agricultural burning, rids the land of excess straw and stubble.
“It, more of less, kind of helps clear up the field,” said Walter Adams, the agriculture and natural resource technician with Lenoir County Cooperative Extension.
Once farmers have harvested the wheat, they’ll cut a perimeter of the field and set it to flames.
Danger naturally appears whenever a fire does, but the farmers turn the ground up around the perimeter and monitor the area as prevention methods.
“The only thing the farmers have to be really careful of is making sure that the fire doesn’t hop over that fire break and get into nearby surrounding woods,” Adams said. “On rare occasions, that does happen.”
He said a Jones County pine tree burned last year due to a field fire. Additionally, a barn burned to the ground near Trenton Tuesday due to what investigators feel was a controlled burn getting out of control.
Containing the fire is the main concern.
Area residents should expect to see these fires until the first week of July, as most farmers are burning off their wheat fields in preparation to plant soybeans.
There is typically 5-8 inches of stubble left during this time of the season. Farmers need to smooth the area before they drill in soybeans, the only crop likely to be planted at this point.
Adams said any time someone currently sees a field burning, it’s a wheat field.
“There’s been quite a lot of wheat planted this year,” he said.
Farmers base how much of a crop they plant off the commodity profit. The current price of wheat is $6.87 per bushel, but the plant was priced near $10 at the beginning of the season, which drove the large amounts.
Carlton Alphin, a local farmer, will burn at least 40 Lenoir County fields before the season closes. He said the process takes between 30 minutes and an hour.
“It depends on what way you’re planting,” he said. “You’ve also got to make sure the conditions are right before you burn. Normally we have a torch, and we can ride around and light it like that.”
Once the straw burns out, the fire will extinguish itself and farmers will be ready for a new grain crop.
Jessika Morgan can be reached at 252-559-1078 or at Jessika.Morgan@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessikaMorgan.
For more information on area agricultural burning, visit lenoir.ces.ncsu.edu/