Jun 01, 2016
Trip Report - Indiana and Western Ohio
Author: Michael Cordonnier/Soybean & Corn Advisor, Inc.
On Sunday, May 29th, we made a swing through north-central Indiana and western Ohio with the following observations.
- The weather was warm and sunny. Some fields look wet, but we did not see any significant standing water. During the entire day we only saw 4 tractors in the field, one was planting corn, one was planting soybeans, and two were working ground. Granted, it was a Sunday, but I expected to see more field activity.
- Both the corn and soybean crops are delayed in both states with many fields still not planted.
- The most advanced corn was at the 4-leaf stage with most corn in the 2-leaf or 3-leaf stage.
- There was a lot of corn that had been planted but had not yet emerged or had not yet been planted.
- The corn stands looked OK, but it was too early to judge a lot of the fields. The corn was a pale green color which is normal for this stage of growth. The corn is definitely late getting planted and I would rate the corn that emerged as about average.
- We saw some soybeans that were a few inches tall and some fields that had just emerged. Most of the soybeans had either not yet been planted, or they had been planted but had not yet emerged.
- In some areas we saw field after field of soybeans that had emerged, but not a single field of corn that had emerged. It is hard to know at this point, but I suspect that farmers did some switching from corn to soybeans because why would there be a lot of soybeans that had emerged but no corn?
Summary - The crops are definitely delayed in both states and I would rate the condition of the crop that has emerged as just OK. I suspect that some farmers switched from corn to soybeans because we saw areas where only soybeans had emerged and not corn. One positive take away was that we did not see any extensive areas of standing water or even overly saturated conditions. There may be some out there, but we didn't see any. Therefore the planting delays were caused by cool and wet conditions and not because of standing water. That means that as the weather warms up and dries out, farmers will be able to do a lot of catch up on their planting.