The soy-bean, in particular, has proved sufficiently resistant to cold in spring and to adverse weather during summer to warrant heavy planting, especially throughout the South.

It doesn't get really cold in South Africa, so we didn't really prepare for the weather. And we had never seen snow to that point.

Summer in the deep South is not only a season, a climate, it's a dimension. Floating in it, one must be either proud or submerged.

We asked how long they had been planting resistant soybean varieties, and we found that 85 to 92 percent of producers currently plant SCN-resistant beans. Producers are losing yield, but they're not attributing the loss to SCN because they are growing resistant beans and don't think they have a problem.

We still expect our customers to resume buying fertilizer for the spring planting.

Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.