Iowa farmers made major strides in spring planting over the past week as drier weather allowed more time in the field.
According to the latest crop progress report from the USDA, corn planting across Iowa is now well over 70% complete, while soybean planting has surpassed 60%. Much of the state experienced favorable field conditions during the week ending May 10, helping farmers keep planting on schedule.
On a recent episode of the Extension Report podcast, Iowa State University Extension Field Agronomist Angie Rieck-Hinz said many farmers across Iowa made significant progress during the past week, with some producers in the area already finishing spring planting.
“Most people are wrapped up planting, that’s great news,” Rieck-Hinz says. “There are people who still have some acres to plant. Nearly everybody I’ve talked to in the last four or five days says they’ll probably be done by Friday of this week. And that’d be great because I hope we get some rain and that’s what we want, right? Get our crops planted and get a nice rain to get those seeds germinated and help everything uniformly emerge from the soil.
She also noted that corn emergence remains in the early stages, with warmer temperatures and expected rainfall likely to help crop growth, although some areas are experiencing soil crusting that could delay or hinder seedlings from emerging.
“These warmer temperatures will help with growth and development of corn and soybeans,” Rieck-Hinz says. “I think the biggest challenge we’re seeing right now is we have a lot of soil crusting going on that is sort of delaying or hindering emergence of those new seedlings as they try to push up out of the ground that soil is pretty hard in a lot of places and a lot of that has to do with a couple of things. We do a lot of tillage so we kind of remove all that soil structure and then all those clay and silt particles kind of settle in. So there are people that have ripped up stands to replant them because emergence is very inconsistent and some of those seedlings aren’t going to make it out of the ground. So that is happening in places.”
The latest report reflects continued momentum for Iowa farmers as planting season moves deeper into May.
Full segment with Rieck-Hinz below
