Farmers were able to substantially increase the amount of corn and beans planted in the last week.
The U.S.D.A. report shows corn went from 2% planted to 22%, and beans went from 1% to 11%. Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig says you sometimes have to face wet fields the early on in the spring. “You know, we always need moisture this time of year and we want it, and so that’s a blessing, but at the same time, it does start to slow things down,” he says.
Corn planting is still 10% behind the pace of last year, and beans are lagging by 12%. Naig says it’s not a big concern this early in the planting season. “If you look at the calendar, we are still in the month of April, …..we’ve got a couple of weeks here where we will be able to get this crop in the ground and still consider it to be very much on time,” Naig says.
Naig says farmers can move across the fields quickly when there is dry weather. “When they do hit it hard, they can get a lot of crop in the ground in just a really short number of days,” Naig says. The crop report says farmers had four days suitable for field work last week.
