Need rain? Farmer says “bring your buckets” to southern Illinois

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Need rain? Farmer says “bring your buckets” to southern Illinois

While many Midwest farmers are battling drought conditions, southeastern Illinois farmer Rich Guebert has the opposite problem.

“For the last three weeks we have been getting rains. Farmers in other states, bring your buckets and take all the rain you want back with ya!”

Guebert, who serves as president of the Illinois Farm Bureau, says just when it gets dry enough for a half a day of field work, it rains again. And with all their anhydrous and dry fertilizer being applied in the spring he tells Brownfield, “We’ve got a lot of prep work to do before we put a kernel of corn in the ground.”

But for the state as a whole he says the season appears to be going fairly well. He says in Randolph County, “I would say 35-40% of corn is in the ground. Some of it is up and looks really good. There are beans starting to come out of the ground as well. And the winter wheat crop down our way is all headed out.”

Guebert says each day it rains they fall another step behind, but the planter is ready to roll once the weather is fit.

Interview with Rich Guebert

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