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Planting on the radar for Illinois farmer, but so is more rain
A central Illinois corn and soybean farmer says he is still waiting for a planting window to open.
“Planting has been on the radar for a while, but unfortunately there has been a little too much rain on the radar as well.
Elliott Uphoff of Findlay tells Brownfield they’ve received almost 2 inches of rain in the last week and while it is almost dry enough to plant today (Tuesday) there is more rain in the forecast this week.
He says that could push their start date to the beginning of next month, but he won’t get too anxious until the second week of May.
“Once you get past that second week in May, things start getting pretty serious. If you plant beans first, you start losing yield just because of the planting date and if you plant corn past that date, you may as well plan on a higher dryer bill.”
He says at that point the season would be comparable to 2019, when they planted in less-than-ideal conditions just to get a crop in the ground.
But, Uphoff says with planting preparation complete, they’ve been able to get a head start on some other projects in the meantime.
“We have been doing some bin repair projects, took out some floors, put in new augers. The kind of things we normally wouldn’t get to until summer, but we were running out of jobs to do while we wait for planting.”
Uphoff serves as a district director for the Illinois Soybean Association.
