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Nebraska farmer says nothing compares to last year for planting conditions

An east-central Nebraska corn and soybean farmer says he wishes he could repeat last year. “Well, nothing really compares to last year,” Mitch Oswald of Aurora says. “I mean, last year was about as good as we could possibly have.”

He told Brownfield conditions were nearly perfect this time last year, but now Mother Nature is slowing him down. “We’re not behind, but we’re not really in a hurry to get the planters out and I’m kind of glad for that because I can’t imagine having anything in the ground like that.”

He tells Brownfield soil temps are in the low 40s but once it warms up, he’ll be ready to finish field work. “We had a pretty good stretch last week. Monday through Friday before that rain came. We got all our anhydrous done. We have seven quarters to strip till, liquid fertilizer yet for corn and seed corn then we’ll be ready to go,” he says.

Oswald says soil moisture is near ideal versus what they saw in 2019 when it was a wet spring and farmers who planted later benefited.