Iowa Planting Picks Up Steam: Both Corn and Soybean Progress at Near Record Pace

It was a cold start to the planting season in parts of Iowa but with a break in the weather farmers have been going full steam and progress is ahead of average.   

Minden, Iowa farmer Kevin Ross says April was cold with soil temperatures below 50 degrees, which slowed corn planting on his operation but he's still within his normal planting window.  "The last two years for me I haven't started playing it hardly any corn until around May 10. We've hammered it in pretty quick right after that and at that point, you're guaranteed warm temps and that corn just pops right out and gets moving. So, I haven't felt like we've been very far behind with that."

With cool soils up until last week, Ross is actually farther ahead on soybean planting verses corn.   "The last couple of years I’ve done this anyway, I tried to knock in a bunch of the beans if not all of them right away and it's just turned out it's been working well for us from a yield standpoint."

In fact, he says they’ve been some of his best beans on the farm.  "Last year we were in, you know, 60 to 70 bushels. It was for us around here is really good year before that we were in that 70 to 80 range, which is exceptional for our area."

While it isn’t showing up yet on the Drought Monitor Ross says southwestern Iowa is still dry and could use more rain.   He says, "I don't get worried about drought too much in the April May timeframe but if we miss you know a lot of April May rains and all of a sudden, I'm very concerned going into June, July portions of the growing season.  So we got to have something in the tank when we start hitting those the hit or miss times for us."

But he’s not overly worried since the last two seasons have been dry in his area and he turned out with above average yields.  "Corn yields last year for us is the second last year that I had around here. We ended up mid twos on almost everything just ended up with a really good corn yield. And like I said, being able to was at this point at all either.  So the last couple of years have been a couple of best years yield wise than I've ever had.  Hopefully we can keep that up."   

And Ross will likely need it this year with narrower profit margins, especially as he elected to apply anhydrous last fall when fertilizer prices were higher.  "I don't love during the fall but we did and it's you know, it's what we're dealing with this year so you feel like a lot more went on last fall conditions were right and clearly we weren't the same the only ones in that same boat not wanting to pay that high price."  Plus, corn prices are lower than a year ago which will also impact his bottom line.