Southeast Iowa Crop Conditions

Welcome back to another Midwest growing season. It does not feel much like spring today with sunrise temps below 20 and a projected high of 40 but there is one thing that is for sure about the weather is this part of the country: if you don’t
like the weather today, just wait a day and it will be different.

Forecast for early next week is for lows in the 40’s and highs in the 70’s. The frost is all gone and until Easter Sunday it looked like we may finally have an early spring.Snow and cold temps hit on Easter and pushed everything off for a week or more as the temps have stayed cold. Fortunately the area to the Southeast of Storm Lake was the least hit by the snow/rain and fields are drying out more quickly than any other area of our trade territory. As the temps begin to rise toward the weekend,activity in the fields will begin to pick up again and planting will likely get started.The 10 day forecast looks like seasonal temps and only small chances for rain. If farmers are given a week of good weather to run, they can get a lot done in a short window.

One advantage of the ground thawing as quickly as it did was the ability to get fertilizer applications finished and also getting more tile drainage projects completed. Below are pictures of a project being installed last week on a Stalcup
managed farm east of Storm Lake.

So far the Covid-19 outbreak has not had a dramatic effect on the operations side offarming. Farmers are accustom to doing their jobs with nobody else around and can usually keep a safe distance from others. Most businesses, including Stalcupag Service, have made adjustments to how they operate to ensure safety for
employees and the public.

Unfortunately grain and livestock markets have seen dramatic effects from the shutdown. The ethanol industry is either shutting down or slowing production at most plants and prices are reflecting the lower demand for fuel. Adding an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia during a global pandemic is the 1-2 punch that the corn market couldn’t handle. Hopefully this is behind us soon and everyone can get back to whatever our new normal will be and the economic recovery can begin.