Nebraska farmer says it’s not an ideal start to the planting season

Nebraska farmer says it’s not an ideal start to the planting season

A Southwest Nebraska farmer says planting conditions are worse than last year.

Andy Jobman tells Brownfield it’s drier and colder. “We went ahead and ran center pivots ahead of planting to try to put some moisture back in the fields and soil.  That’s helped a lot, but pivot corner and dryland fields are in desperate need of rainfall.”  

He says April was the second driest month on record and while daytime temperatures are warming up, vernight lows have dipped, “into the low 30s even high 20s sometimes, and it’s made doing all of that prewater that we did with center pivots hard to do because we’ve had to shut down machines overnight so they don’t freeze up on you.”

Jobman says he’s about half finished with corn and soybean planting and the forecast looks promising for moisture.

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