News

Agronomist says Northern Plains planting ‘off to the races’

An agronomist and corn product manager with Peterson Farms Seed says corn planting is making good progress in the Northern Plains.

Rick Swenson tells Brownfield many farmers in South Dakota hit the fields at the end of April.

“I’ve heard of some of that stuff, it was planted around April 22. You get around the tree groves, some of that is already out of the ground. I’m going to go out and look at a bunch of stuff this week, but we’re kind of off to the races. I would expect most of that to be out of the ground here real quick.”

Swenson says a late snow in March and early April delayed some fieldwork in the region, as temperatures dropped to around 20 degrees in the last week in some locations. But Swenson says the recent cool temperatures hasn’t hurt the soybeans.

“We can push soybean planting as early as we want, but if those things ever come out of the ground and we get some of those cold temperatures, around that 5th, 10th of May, there will be replants done, so hopefully we don’t run into that. Now that we’re kind of by the cold weather, I’m not seeing anything in the forecast that concerns me.”

Swenson covers Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.