Corn, soy planting fall behind

WASHINGTON COUNTY — By April 24, 2021 nearly a fifth of Iowa’s corn (18%) and 5% of its soy were already in the ground according to the USDA crop progress report. By the same time this year, that number was considerably lower, at just 2% for corn, and 1% for soy beans.

“Rain, high winds and cold conditions continued to stall spring planting, limiting Iowa farmers to 2.3 days suitable for fieldwork last week,” said Melissa Bond, a statistical assistant for the USDA NASS Iowa Field Office. “Reports were received of limited corn and soybean planting as well as planting oats. In addition to periodic precipitation, cool soil temperatures have some farmers waiting to plant row crops.”

Lance Bell, president of the Washington and Keokuk County Corn and Soybean Board, said he was not yet concerned.

“It’s a little bit delayed compared to normal, but it’s not a serious thing yet, I don’t feel,” he said. “Hopefully we get some warm weather soon … we haven’t missed that much growing season yet. You typically try to plant as soon as you can, particularly with corn and beans, but we’re not even at the end of April.”

Bell said he’d be more worried if the problem persisted.

“If we’re still sitting like this with very little done a month from now, it’s going to be kind of serious,” he said. “We’ve trimmed quite a bit of yield potential then. At this point, I wouldn’t say we’ve trimmed yield potential very much.”

The effects of a delayed planting season on harvest timelines vary based on the weather in between, according to Bell. He said he expected the system to sort itself out.

“It depends a lot on how much heat you get during the growing season to get the crop to maturity,” he said. “Mother Nature has a way of making it work out, usually … you get several days of nice weather where you get warm, dry wind blowing and all of a sudden the ground’s pretty much fit, and everybody can get a lot of their crop planted pretty quickly.”

The state said it saw some trends moving toward more favorable conditions.

“It was another active weather week with additional periods of severe thunderstorms and locally heavy rainfall,” said Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig in an April 25 news release. “Cooler temperatures and windy conditions also persisted, though soil temperatures are slowly rising. Soil temperatures are at or above 50 degrees for much of the southern two-thirds of Iowa.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com