Trip Report - Eastern Illinois and Western Indiana

We made a quick tour through eastern Illinois and western Indiana on Saturday with the following observations:

The region is very saturated with many small ponded areas. Even though there may not have been standing water, the fields looked very wet. The region got lucky by missing the rains that were forecasted for Saturday night and Sunday. Most of the heavy rain fell further east in central and northern Indiana and Ohio. With 2-3 good drying days the farmers might be able to get back into the fields, especially the areas that are not saturated. In order to replant the ponded areas, it would take a week of dry weather.

During the entire trip we only saw three tractors in the field and only one farmer was actually planting. The field he was planting looked very wet to me.

The vast majority of the corn has been planted with the tallest corn 4-5 inches tall and a lot of corn just now emerging. The ponded areas will need to be replanted once it dries out. The emerged corn was light green in color which is typical for this time of the year. The plant populations looked OK with some minor gaps caused by the saturated conditions.

The first corn rating of the season indicated that only 52% of the corn in Illinois was rated good to excellent. The first corn rating for Indiana indicated that 43% of the crop was rated good to excellent and in Ohio, 49% was rated good to excellent.

Many of the soybeans have not been planted due to the wet conditions. Occasionally you saw soybeans just emerging, but it was too early to judge the plant populations. If the soybeans in the ponded areas have already been planted, they will probably have to be replanted once it dries out.