News

Very wet ground in NW Missouri

Northwest Missouri corn planting is behind by some 15% and that region has gotten up to 15 inches of rain during planting season. Bill Wiebold, University of Missouri Extension specialist, says the clock is ticking, “I think there’s some real difficulty in getting that corn planted. We’ve done some planting date studies in that area. It gets pretty iffy after you get to the first of June which is just a few days away.”

Wiebold recommends farmers use an online tool called U-2-U to decide about the risks and benefits of planting earlier maturing corn or switching to soybeans, “It’s a very useful website and you can change some scenarios and see what would happen to black layer date and where the frost would occur and not occur.”

But, Missouri Corn Growers CEO Gary Marshall says growers have at least a couple more weeks to keep planting before making changes., “The other option is, in another couple of weeks is to switch to shorter maturing varieties so that you miss that real heat part of late July and early August. I think we’re going to see corn planted because there’s a lot of fertilizer, a lot of the herbicides are already down. But, in the end there are going to be some acres switching over to soybeans, that’s for sure.”

Wiebold says tools are helpful but “no model can take into account all the intricacies of a living plant and Mother Nature.”  All areas of northern Missouri are behind in planting because of wet ground and continued rains.