Crop Updates from Iowa Corn Leaders – Wed., April 16, 2014

Bob Bowman of DeWitt in Clinton County is president of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB). He and his son are no-till and strip-till farmers. They just started doing the strip tillage work last week and have another week of work to do on the strips. They usually wait 3 to 5 days or even a week later before they plant after completing the strips.  So, they are a ways off from planting. He says their ground temperature is still around 40 degrees.  Many other farmers in his area did some tillage work last week and a lot of anhydrous was applied. Rain in his area varied from one inch and half to a couple of inches or more just a few miles from him.

In northeast Iowa, Nick Leibold of New Hampton, an ICPB director, says there still hasn’t been much fieldwork in his part of the state. There were a few farmers who sowed oats last week. No one has applied any anhydrous in his area. Leibold spoke to his tiling contractor who said he the first couple feet of soils is thawed but beyond that it is still has not thawed out. He doesn’t expect he will be able to tile for some time. Leibold had golf ball size hail in a storm on Saturday night. He received two inches of rain and an inch or two of snow but most of it has melted.

Roger Zylstra of Lynnville is president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA). In the past week he and his son have been repairing waterways and gullies in the fields that had some damage from heavy rains last year. They also applied some urea on some of their fields that are in a corn-on-corn rotation.  In his area, a lot of anhydrous was applied last week and just a few acres were planted to corn.  They had 3.5 inches of rain over the weekend. That is the most rain they have has since May of 2013 when they experienced field flooding. He says they were extremely dry and there was still frost on the ground last week. So, the rain was needed.


In southwest Iowa, Carl Jardon of Randolph, an ICGA director in Fremont County says Sunday they received some much needed rainfall which totaled about 1.4 inches. Until Sunday, they had been terribly dry. He doesn’t recall seeing the Nishnabotna River as low as it has been recently. A few farmers in his area started planting last week, mostly on mostly in areas that are typically wet including low ground and seeping side hills. Most farmers in his area finished applying anhydrous last week.