Vermilion Parish could use some rain today; just ask the farmers who keep looking in the sky hoping to see the wet stuff fall.

Four months into the new year, the parish is behind nine inches of of rain and over the next week, little rain is forecast.

That lack o f rain is beginning to worry parish farmers.

The cattle farmer is not seeing his grass grow in the fields, which is not good news because it means he is going to have to buy hay for his animals.

The sugar cane farmer began the year on a positive note and his crop started off well, but things have changed since there has been hardly any rain. The new crop is ready to grow but it needs rain.

The rice farmer loved the dry weather at first because he was able to drill his new crop of rice in dry conditions. Now with the seeds in the ground, he is hoping for rain so he does not have to pump water from the ground to flood his crops.

The soybean farmers have not planted anything yet because they are waiting on rain to moisten the soil in order to plant. No water means more waiting.

Stuart Gauthier of the LSU Ag Center said rice farmers are already having to deal with the high expense of planting rice due to high diesel costs; now they will have to deal with lack of rain water, which is causing problems in irrigation canals. Many farmers prefer using water from canals to flood their rice fields; however, the canals are getting salty.

Salt water from the Vermilion Bay is slowly creeping up the canals, making it too salty to place on rice fields. A good rain would push the salt water back into the Bay.

Gauthier said farmers, who can not use the canal water, have to pump water from the Chico Aquifer, which is an added expense.

There are some farmers who are using canal water to water their grazing fields for their cattle and horses. But like rice farmers, they are monitoring the salt in the canal water.

Andrew Granger, an LSU Ag Center agent, said sugar cane farmers are not ready to hit the panic button because of lack of rain. Granger said the season began well and the new crop shot up with the rain back in March. But since, the new crop has not grown much. He said rain is needed to help the crop grow.