Prevent Plant in South Dakota, North Dakota Could Rival Last Year

Planting seems to be progressing nicely in South Dakota. On Monday, USDA said South Dakota has more than 50% of its corn crop planted, which is up 48 percentage points from the same time last year and 13 points ahead of the 5-year average.

But, it is a tale of two planting situations in South Dakota, says DuWayne Bosse of Bolt Marketing. He says while the southern half of South Dakota is seeing prime planting conditions, the northern area of the state is struggling to get into the fields.

“You get north of U.S. Highway 212 and up to my area in Britton, S.D., and we’ve done nothing; we haven’t turned a wheel here,” Bosse says. “I drove to Bismarck, N.D., this weekend and back and took two different routes. I could count on one hand the number of fields that had field work done. It’s very wet, very cold.”

With no fieldwork done in northern South Dakota, Bosse says prevent plant acres in his area could rival what farmers saw last year. In Bosse’s case, weather in 2019 resulted in only 10% of his acres getting planted. He thinks this year, he’ll be pushing it to get that much planted.

“It’s kind of depressing, but it’s just the way it is; there’s nothing we can do about it,” he says. “It’s a wider area than it was last year that won’t get planted in northeast South Dakota.”

Yet, even with high prevent plant acres in a portion of South Dakota, along with significant acres in North Dakota, the U.S. will still grow plenty of corn. Bosse thinks those missing acres won’t be enough to make a dent in the massive new crop estimates some are saying.

“We’re going to have a lot of corn, and with the acres up here, some people will still get some acres planted,” Bosse says. “They’ll try to push some corn on the ground, especially in North Dakota, but in North Dakota, we will have more prevent plant than last year. My area will have the same, if not more, prevent plant acres. But it’s not a nationwide thing again. So, it’s not going to affect the market.”

USDA’s Crop Progress report on Monday showed North Dakota farmers only have 7% of the corn crop planted, which is 31 percentage points behind the 5-year average and 2 points behind last year’s slow pace.