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Southern Wisconsin farmers fighting water, wind, & weeds

A University of Wisconsin Extension crops and farm management agent says excess rain and storm damage has farmers concerned about yields.  Ted Bay works with producers in Grant and Lafayette counties of Wisconsin and says crops might survive recent flooding, but a loss of nitrogen is a concern.  “For most people, this corn is pretty tall and they may not have the readily-available means of adding additional nitrogen here this late in the season.  The season is not actually late, but with the corn this tall, and so their concern is going to be what’s the final yield and how is that going to impact yield at the end of the year.”

Bay says the storms in southern Wisconsin also caused wind damage to corn.  “In some areas, we’ve had a lot of green snap from corn.  It’s at the stage of growth where it’s very fast and may or may not be tassled-out at this point, but that degree of green snap varies from farm to farm and actually varies a great deal from field to field.”

And Bay says they are having more problems with resistant weeds in southern Wisconsin this year.  He tells Brownfield farmers are coming up with alternative herbicide programs, but wet fields are delaying treatment.  “Right now is a crucial time to try to take care of that if it’s happening, in other words, we’ve got weeds that are coming through that are canopy on beans, mostly talking about soybeans here.  Well, the problem is the fields are so soft they can’t get in there with the sprayers.”

Bay says nearly every farm has been impacted to some degree by the recent storms.

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