News

Minnesota farmer concerned about uneven corn

A south-central Minnesota farmer anticipates a poor corn crop after problems during planting.

Sam Ziegler of Good Thunder tells Brownfield rain fell nine straight days after he got his corn planted.

“It rained some every day, and that led into lots of germination (and) emergence problems. So we patchworked in some corn.”

He says that resulted in uneven stands and Ziegler is concerned yields will suffer.

“You get corn competing against each other because they didn’t come up at the same time. And then it’s hard to have a good pollination in a field when it’s so variable. Those poor emergence areas are just going to be pollinating way late.”

The corn condition rating for Minnesota remained steady on the week at 61 percent good to excellent, with 15 percent of the crop silking.

USDA’s latest weekly crop update says soybeans are 61 percent good to excellent, and more than half the crop is blooming.

Small grain harvest is just beginning with oats at two percent harvested.

And the second cutting of alfalfa is 42 percent done compared to the five-year average of 39 percent.