Texas A&M Agronomy Society cancels annual corn maze due to drought
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY, Texas (KBTX) – The Texas A&M Agronomy Society is unable to hold its annual corn maze and fall festival after this summer’s extreme drought killed the corn crop.
Since 2015, the organization has been responsible for the maze, which brings in thousands of visitors and some funding for the club.
“Everybody participating and involved with it just loves being out in the field,” Corn Maze Chair Cabot Ellis said.
Planning for the corn maze begins as soon as December. Agronomy Society students then begin cultivating the soil and planting seeds in July.
According to Ellis, the lack of rain led to growing conditions that were “not suitable,” leading to the event’s cancellation.
“There was no rain for almost three, four months and temperatures above 100 degrees for three and four months,” he said.
Even with their best efforts, they say there wasn’t anything more they could do to save the crop.
“We were out here watering and it required us to move our big sprinkler 12 times around the maze to get enough water put down, and by the time you got back to the start, your seeds were dry. You can’t germinate seeds without water and with soil temperatures that hot, it really posed a problem,” Ellis said.
Plans are already underway for a possible spring event to replace the canceled corn maze. In the meantime, Ellis is confident the Agronomy Society will come back next year with a bigger and better corn maze.
“We wanted to make sure that we delivered a product that represented our Agronomy Society well,” he said.
