Northwest Iowa Crop Conditions

Hot summer weather has arrived, which is speeding up the crop growth (especially the corn). This hot and humid weather is also sparking damaging storms in areas with hail, heavy rain, and wind. There was damaging hail last week especially in parts of O’Brian and Clay counties. Some farms were totally destroyed by the hail. Heavy rains in Plymouth, Sioux, and Lyon counties caused localized flooding. Outside of the storm damaged areas crops have improved, aided by seasonal temps and moderate rainfall.

Most of the corn in this area looks good, it’s currently 3 to 4 feet tall and a healthy green color The exception is where saturated soils are limiting root development. These areas are easy to spot; the corn is short, uneven, and the plants are yellowish green. Even earliest planted corn is somewhat behind schedule this year. It looks like most corn willpollinate in late July rather than early July. If temperatures average near normal from now to September, corn will still mature on
time. However, it may be wetter than we like.

The soybean crop has also improved this week, but most are still small for July. Narrow planted soybeans may have an advantage this year. The challenge for the soybean crop will be to get as much growth as possible before they start flowering and setting pods (which is not far away).The gran markets fell last week (especially corn) after USDA released its Quarterly Stocks and June Acreage Reports which showed 5 million more acres of corn plated than expectations. This will get resurveyed in August, so it will be interesting to see if that number is loweredsignificantly.