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Agribusiness group says watch the weather before applying inputs

An agribusiness group is urging farmers to pay attention to the weather before hitting the fields.

Chuck Lippstreu with the Michigan Agribusiness Association says, “It’s important to think about what could be coming before surface application of nutrients that could be subject to heavy rainfall events.”

Lippstreu tells Brownfield radar and a good forecast are great tools to help make field applications at the right times, especially the way rainfall events have been trending in recent years.  “Rainfall is also becoming more heavy and more spread out, so what you’ll see is several days or even weeks without major rain to speak of, but then we’ll have major rainfall events, extreme rainfall that really makes nutrient management more complex.”

Lippstreu says he is expecting another wet spring following the wettest year on record, along with the wettest three-year and five-year rolling averages for total precipitation in Michigan.