Rains Slow Start of Fieldwork

BY DANIEL GRANT FarmWeek

The start of fieldwork was delayed in recent days as rounds of rain pummeled parts of the Midwest, including large portions of Illinois.

Heavy rainfall totals were reported in southern Illinois late last week followed by a widespread dumping of 2-3 inches in 36 hours over the weekend. That prompted flood advisories from the Quad Cities to east of Galesburg and over to the Iowa border at Burlington, the National Weather Service reported. But, it’s a different story elsewhere as dryness remains a concern for the start of the growing season.

“In the 48 continental states, only 65% of topsoil moisture is rated adequate to surplus compared to a year ago when it was 92%,” Bryce Anderson, DTN chief ag meteorologist, told the RFD Radio Network last week. “That’s a big departure. Subsoil moisture is 64% adequate to surplus, down 27 points from last year.”

In Illinois, topsoil rated 70% adequate, 13% surplus and 17% short to very short as of April 4. This was prior to the multiple rounds of scattered showers and thunderstorms across a significant portion of the state last week.

“I’m not too concerned about the Illinois soil moisture situation,” Anderson said prior to the storms. “There’s a big area in the Northern Plains that’s very dry and quite a few areas in the far Southern Plains that are quite dry as well. That’s going to get more attention as we go further in the growing season."

The two-week outlook showed multiple chances of rain events across a large portion of the Midwest beginning last week. It also forecast a return of cooler, more seasonable temperatures with high temperatures in the 50s and 60s this week, with lows dipping to the 40s and 30s, possibly approaching the freezing mark.

“There’s a very useful string of precipitation we could get over a two week period the way the forecast is lining up,” Anderson noted April 5.

Ron Haase, a FarmWeek CropWatcher from Gilman (Iroquois County) and his brother, Dave, took advantage of warm days last week, with unseasonable highs near 80, to begin planting on April 6.

“We are planting soybeans. This is the earliest we have ever planted,” the CropWatcher said. “Soil conditions are real good down to the seeding depth and wet below that.”

The Haase brothers decided to start with soybeans due to a shallower planting depth leading to better soil conditions versus planting deeper into wetter conditions. They reported soil temperatures of 64-67 degrees in corn stubble and 82-85 degrees at planting depth in tilled ground.There wasn’t enough planting activity in the state as of April 4, though, to show up on the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s (NASS) weekly crop progress report.

“There’s a lot of anhydrous, tillage and burndowns going on,” Matt Wehmeyer, vice president of AgriMAXX Wheat Company in Mascoutah (St. Clair County) said on April 7. “There’s been some planters in fields. We’re just on the front end of planting.”

Nationwide, farmers planted 2% of the corn crop as of April 4, with the majority of action in Texas where 55% of the crop was in the ground. Elsewhere, 2% of corn was planted in Kansas and 1% in Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee last week, NASS reported.