News

Iowa crop conditions fall following week of severe weather

Stormy weather likely played a role as Iowa’s crop conditions rating fell over the past week.

USDA says 79 percent of corn is in good to excellent condition, compared to 84 percent last week.

Soybeans in the good to excellent category went from 83 to 77 percent.

Heavy rains and damaging winds impacted parts of the state, especially southern Iowa.

Tyler Harp with Syngenta tells Brownfield plant health becomes more important following storms.

“This is sort of the herbicide and nutritional timings, and fungicides are coming up, and I don’t think it’s too early to talk about (plant health). Because one thing that we’ve noticed in terms of what’s predictable every year is that the weather is unpredictable.”

It is a wet start to the growing season, as USDA rates 85 percent of Iowa’s topsoil as adequate to surplus.