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Minnesota farmer combats crop diseases

Many corn and soybean farmers faced significant disease pressure this season.

Rob Tate farms near Cannon Falls in southeast Minnesota and says conditions suited plant pathogens.

“We decided to spray a little more fungicide than maybe what we would’ve planned to do originally, generally I always try to spray any of my corn-on-corn fields with fungicide as a preventative measure. This year with all of the moisture and also concerns about tar spot (we sprayed more).”

He tells Brownfield they also made a fungicide pass on soybeans.

“Typically we do spray fungicide as is. We did have some concerns with aphids, so we just put some insecticide in when we were doing fungicide treatments on those as well.”

Tate says white mold has started to emerge in some soybean fields.