News

Some calm after spring storms

A seed company rep in southwest Minnesota says the growing season has calmed down after an alarming spring.

Craig LaVoi with Peterson Farms Seed tells Brownfield the consensus in his part of the country is this has been the most challenging year to get a crop in.

“Whether you’re a producer or in sales, it’s been one for the books. And I feel good for this stage of the game that we’ve gotten through a lot of these challenges. Things are starting to look good.”

He says quite a few farmers in southwest Minnesota and southeast South Dakota took prevented planting.  But corn that was planted is catching up.

“We do want to get through September. For the most part, a lot of corn tasseled in the last two weeks (and) we want 60 days from there to get to maturity. So that’s going to put us into the end of September, and we’ll definitely want to get through (September) frost-free.”

LaVoi says surprisingly, weed, disease and insect pressure is lower than normal.  But he points out with a late crop, diseases and pests could come on later too.