Northwest Iowa Crop Conditions

Field conditions improved greatly last week with warm and dry weather. The majority of this region’s corn crop was planted last week, and many farmers rolled right into planting soybeans. It is amazing how fast the crop can be planted when
the weather cooperates. This is the earliest major planting progress we’ve seen for along time, going back to at least 2012. We had light, variable rain this morning which was enough to pause planting briefly. The forecast should allow planting to resume in the next day or so. The long range outlook is mainly dry with slightly below average temps.

Corn planted recently should emerge in two weeks or less. Faster emergence would be nice, but soil temps are still just under 60 and it looks like they will hold fairly steady over the next two weeks. Soil conditions were much better for planting than we’ve seen in recent years. We expect to see uniform stands of corn as long as we don’t get a hard pounding rain or strong cold snap prior to emergence.

Soybean planting is on a record early pace (at least for my region). I’ve never seen so many soybeans planted in April.Years ago most farmers wouldn’t consider plantingsoybeans until mid-May, but the trend is to plant them earlier and earlier. There are two reasons for this, soybean yield has been shown to respond favorably to early planting if soil conditions are fit. Second, modern seed treatments help reduce the risk of seedling disease. It looks like most soybeans will be planted by Mother’s Day.

Grain markets remain in the dump. Fast planting progress, crude oil struggling, and uncertain ethanol/livestock demand are all negatives. It’s hard to find any positives in the grain market now.