News

Hail shreds north Iowa crops

Hail shredded crops across multiple counties in north Iowa Wednesday.

Iowa State University Extension field agronomist Gentry Sorenson says a thunderstorm moved from the northwest to north central part of the state.

“The corn right now in the area that was impacted was right around V5 to V7 in growth stage (and) when we think about corn, the growing point is above ground at about V6 and V7 it’s definitely above ground at that point.”

He tells Brownfield it will take one to two weeks to fully evaluate the damaged corn and says farmers can split stalks to understand level of severity of bruising and locate the growing point in reference to where the bruising is located at to understand stalk integrity.

For soybeans, Sorenson says the growing point is above the ground as soon as it emerges unfortunately.

“And we’re seeing a lot of these fields with not much leaf tissue left on a lot of those plants.”

Gentry says the first step for farmers dealing with hail damage should be communicating with a crop insurance agent.