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South Dakota farmer calls 2020 planting ‘stark contrast’ to 2019
Completion of planting is a much different scenario than last year for Brandon Wipf, who farms in east central South Dakota near Huron. It’s because of good weather, Wipf told Brownfield Ag News Wednesday.
“The rains we’ve gotten have come slowly and have been limited in size to the extent we were able to get the majority of our acres planted this year,” said Wipf, “which is in stark contrast to what we dealt with in 2019.”
South Dakota corn planting is 86 percent finished as of this past Sunday. Not even a quarter of the crop had been planted last year at this time, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. The crop is 44 percent emerged and is rated 74 percent good to excellent.
Soybean planting is 57 percentage points ahead of last year’s pace at 62 percent complete. Soybeans are 19 percent emerged.
Before he started planting, Wipf was concerned there would be a lot of prevent-plant acres, which turned out not to be the case for him. And although commodity markets tanked, Wipf stayed the course in his acreage plan.
“We really don’t pay as much attention to that as we do to what we know has worked agronomically for us,” said Wipf, who is also a director with the American Soybean Association, “and a good amount of on-farm storage gives us more confidence to do that.”
South Dakota’s winter wheat crop is rated 76 percent good to excellent. Spring wheat is almost all planted and is 79 percent good to excellent. Sorghum is 29 percent planted compared to only 2 percent having been planted the same week last year. Sunflower planting is behind normal at eight percent planted. The normal is 13 percent planted by now.
South Dakota pastures are rated 70 percent good to excellent.
AUDIO: Brandon Wipf
