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Planting season starting off better than 2019 & 2020

A northeastern Illinois farmer says this planting season is starting off much better than 2019 and 2020.

Andy Bauman farms non-GMO corn and soybeans in Pontiac. He says wet conditions the past two years delayed planting and crop emergence, but it looks like he will get started planting ahead of schedule this year, beginning next week.

“We’ve been in the 80’s for 5 or 6 days now, so the weather conditions we have are way more favorable than last year. I am looking to get into next week and see what the two-to-three-week forecast looks like and we will probably get started planting if it’s still dry.”

Bauman tells Brownfield his areas has been dry since the February snowstorm and with little rain in the forecast his main concern is lack of soil moisture.

“Probably one of the driest springs since 2012, I wouldn’t say it is quite that dry yet, but we do not have a lot of subsoil moisture.”

He says even as his neighbors transition to earlier bean planting, he still prefers to plant all of their corn first.

“Manage weeds, plant corn, manage more weeds and then plant soybeans. I was at a meeting one time where they said start clean, spray clean, stay clean and you’ll finish clean so that is the motto we have.”

He says he did consider planting one non-GMO soybean variety a little earlier this year, but because of logistical issues he won’t have that seed in time to do so.