Cool weather, rain highlighted by first crop progress report

DES MOINES — A sense of relief was evident in the year’s first U.S. Department of Agriculture Crop Progress Report issued for the state of Iowa on April 1.

The weekly description, a collaboration with the National Agricultural Statistics Service and Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, said cooler than usual temperatures and “much needed rain/snow showers” left Iowa farmers with 1.6 days suitable for fieldwork during the week ending March 31, helping to restore area soil moisture.

Topsoil moisture condition rated 22% very short, 37% short, 37% adequate and 4% surplus, the report said. Subsoil moisture condition rated 35% very short, 41% short, 22% adequate and 2% surplus.

Each of those numbers is an improvement from the final progress report of 2023, issued in November, when topsoil moisture was 34% very short, 51% short, 14% adequate and 1% surplus. Subsoil moisture conditions at the time were 62% very short, 27% short, 10% adequate and 1% surplus.

The precipitation totals represent a breath of fresh air for the drought-plagued corner of the Corn Belt, but hardly mean producers are out of the woods.

For one thing, an accompanying weather report from State Climatologist Justin Glisan said thunderstorms were more concentrated in Iowa’s northwest corner, where a drought is less severe. For another, ongoing precipitation is hardly assured.

“We’re definitely not totally out of the drought that we have, but this is definitely helping,” said Iowa State University Extension Field Agronomist Rebecca Vittetoe. She added that Iowa was “dryer, compared to where we were last year at this time. So, we’re thankful for this moisture, but we’re going to continue to need moisture as we go along.”

Statewide topsoil moisture levels of 59% short or very short are over 20 percentage points higher than they’ve been in early April in the last decade. The last time Hawkeye State farmers started the month this dry, according to previous crop progress reports, was in 2013 when a whopping 84% of Iowa’s fields showed a topsoil moisture shortage.

Southeast Iowa’s moisture totals through the end of March — as recorded by an Iowa Environmental Mesonet monitoring station in Crawfordsville — show the region with 2.14 fewer inches in the first three months of this year than last, though it also shows slightly more rain in the first two days of April 2024 than in all of that month for 2023.

Continued rainfall is anything but assured. The first crop progress report of 2023 showed a week with less than two days suitable for fieldwork as well, hardly representative of the anxiety-inducing drought which followed that spring, summer and fall.

As for crop progression itself, Monday’s report said oat seeding was already 21% complete across the state, 11 days ahead of last year’s timeline as well as the five-year average. Much of that planting happened before last week, it said, with the first leaves already emerging in some areas. Planting of the crop is a tad slower in Southeast Iowa, at just 15% complete.

Corn and soy planting have not yet begun. Most farmers plant those seeds in mid- or late April, when soil temperatures more reliably reach 50 degrees and higher.

Pasture conditions, meanwhile, are 38% poor or very poor, 38% fair, and 24% good or excellent. That’s a less substantial improvement than the last pasture condition update, issued Oct. 30, which showed 40% of such land in poor or very poor condition, 42% fair, and 20% good or excellent.

With calving season in “full swing,” the report said pastures still had some time to add vegetation before producers starting turning their livestock out on the fields.

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com