In Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report, Indiana corn planting is 30% complete and 10% has emerged. Both of those numbers are significantly ahead of the five-year average pace. The story is the same for Indiana soybeans with 35% planted and 11% now emerged.
The planting numbers from USDA look great, but struggles continue for farmers in northern Indiana, like LaPorte County’s Denise Scarborough.
“We actually were able to get in the field, get some soybeans planted last week, knock some of those out, but we’re still planting around some wet holes, or kind of ponded areas in fields,” Scarborough told HAT on Monday. “It looks like we’re going to get a pretty significant storm this afternoon, this evening. I’m praying that we don’t have any really nasty weather to lead us into this next week, but after that, it looks pretty clear. But man, we could sure use some warm weather. Looks like we’re going to be in the 50s most of the week and could really use some warm weather and, hopefully not a lot, but some wind to help dry out the soils that we have.”
Heading south from there, Rippy Farms is moving right along in West Central Indiana’s Fountain, Montgomery, and Tippecanoe Counties. Ryan Rippy says the only hold up has been equipment related.
“I am in the last field of corn right now,” Rippy said Monday morning. “If I can get the rain to hold off for a couple more hours, we should be done with corn. We’ve still got about three days of bean planting yet to go. We’ve been battling a lot of technical and software issues on our bean planter, so it’s not made as good of progress as the corn planter has, but we’re getting through. We got all of our bean burn down finished up over the weekend, so we got that checked off the list. Overall, looking out over the area as a whole, I’d say planting progress is probably somewhere between 50% and probably closer to 75% complete at this point. There’s been a lot done in the last four or five days, and there’s a lot of stuff emerged now.”
On the opposite side of the state, Cox Farms Incorporated in Gaston, Indiana, is making progress as well.
“We had another great week of conditions last week, and so we’ve currently got 50% of our crop in,” said Delaware County farmer Jenna Scott. “We also are starting to see our first planted stuff emerging and starting to come through. We’ll see what this week brings with some rains forecast, but hopefully not too much to keep us out of the field for more than a day or two.”
The final stop on this week’s crop tour is Southern Indiana’s Dubois County in Ferdinand. But we had to take a big detour to get there, because J.R. Roesner had to leave town to get some work done for farmers everywhere.
“I’m currently out in D.C. working on getting year-round E15 legislation passed and also working on the Farm Bill. As far as the crop goes in our area, we’re done with planting, really have caught up spraying-wise, getting ready to start side-dress on the corn. We’re very dry at this time and could definitely use some rain. So, hopefully in the next couple days, it looks like we have some pretty good chances. Hopefully we get some.”
Nationally, corn planting is 25% complete. Soybeans are well ahead of the five-year average of 12%, coming in this week at 23% complete.
