(La Porte County, IN) - A number of local and statewide farmers are behind in their planting due to what, so far, has been a wet spring.
On average, Indiana farmers have eight percent of their corn and soybeans in the ground, according to the latest report from USDA. The five-year average at this point over the past five years in Indiana is 13 and 9 percent respectively.
Farmer Matt Schafer of LaCrosse said just three percent of his over 1,600 acres of soybeans were planted, while none of his 1,200 acres of corn are in the ground.
“We are wet down here,” he said.
Schafer said he was only able to plant 56 acres of soybeans recently during short periods when some of his ground relatively close to the Kankakee River was just dry enough to operate heavy machinery. He explained how none of his fields were dry enough to where he thought he could navigate completely across in a tractor without leaving tire tracks in the soil.
Usually, Schafer said, he has more soybeans and at least a small percentage of corn planted before May 1st. However, he’s not expecting to get much more if any planting done this week because of the ground being too wet to dry out before the next chance of rain predicted for this weekend.
“The ditches are full. The river is pretty full and there’s some ponding in the fields. We’ll see how it goes,” he said.
Farmer Mark Parkman, out near Westville, noted that about 20 percent of his over 1,000 acres of soybeans are in the ground, but no corn.
“On our farm, it’s awfully wet,” he said.
Parkman said he went ahead and started planting soybeans because they’re more capable than corn of germinating in the ground with higher moisture levels. To him, it’s a bit early in the planting season to worry too much, but he is concerned about a weather forecast calling for a wet early May. “If things dry out, we can get going fairly quickly. I just don’t know if things are doing to dry out,” he said.
Schafer said he’s also not too concerned right now, but will be if things don’t dry out enough within the next few weeks, since farm equipment nowadays can make up for lost planting time quickly.
“We can put a lot of acres in the ground in a hurry if conditions get favorable. We can still catch up,” he said.
Ideally, Parkman said, he wants to be done with planting before the first or second week in May. He believes he can still finish up by then depending on Mother Nature.
“We’re in a wet spell right now. If it dries out a bit, we can cover quite a bit of ground fairly quickly,” he said.
On the flip side, Parkman said, any loss of yields from a late planting season could help corn and soybeans prices, which are down a bit from current supplies being higher than demand.
“Whenever you have a weather scare it tends to help the markets. If it stays wet for a while it might be to our advantage. We’ll see what happens,” he said.
