News

Crop advances across portions of Arkansas

Some Arkansas farmers made decent planting progress in the past week with crop emergence advancing well, too.

USDA says 80 percent of the state’s corn is planted, an increase of 18 percentage points from the previous week, with 58 percent of the crop emerged. Forty-five percent of the soybeans are planted with more than half of the crop emerged.

Cotton planting is 6 percent complete, an increase of 4 percentage points from the previous week and 1 percent emerged. Sixty-eight percent of the rice is planted with 40 percent emerged.

Stephen Leininger with Helena Agri-Enterprises, LLC tells Brownfield there hasn’t been much replanting or fieldwork completed in northeast Arkansas, because of flooding and consistent rains.

But there are two days of dryness expected this week and “we’re currently evaluating crop stands to see if a replant may be necessary.”

Leininger says corn, rice, soybeans and some cotton might have been impacted by the floods and flood recovery doesn’t happen quickly.

“Given the current year and commodity prices, it’s never welcome, but it’s a blow farmers didn’t need from a morale standpoint. They’re already not in a great spot to begin with.”

He says more rain is in the forecast later this week, but he’s optimistic the weather will improve in May so crops can recover.

“Some of the crop was far enough along in a vegetative stage, some corn in the three to four leaf and some corn in the seven to eight leaf stage. As long as the growing point is above the ground, it will make it.”

USDA says only five percent of the Arkansas peanut crop has been planted as of Sunday. And 30 percent of the sweet potatoes have been planted with 48 percent of winter wheat headed.