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Indiana farmer says it’s been a challenging planting season
Like many farmers in parts of the Corn Belt getting a crop in the ground has been anything but easy for central Indiana farmer Norman Voyles.
Voyles farms about 35 miles southwest of Indianapolis. “It was the 11th of May before we put our first seed in the ground and that was corn,” he says. “A lot of times we’re nearing the end of corn planting that time of year and I was 5 days later getting soybeans planted. I finally finished up planting corn on the 31st of May.”
And with about 65 acres of beans left to plant, he tells Brownfield, they’re not finished yet. “We had a rain this past Sunday with 0.7” of an inch that knocked us out of planting some creek-bottom ground and it was going to be a week before we could get to that,” he says. “We had a good rain on Wednesday and now it will be sometime next week before we can get in there and get fields finished up.”
Voyles says this has been one of the most challenging springs they’ve faced in recent memory – and it isn’t just because of the planting delays. “Not only are our windows short, but our suppliers of fertilizers and chemicals,” he says. “We hire the application out to our local elevator. And we’re not the only ones they’re having to service and they’re behind the eight-ball, too.”
He says both his corn and soybeans came up quickly once they were planted – but isn’t expecting a bumper crop this year.
AUDIO: Norman Voyles, Indiana farmer
