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Rains come in the nick of time for North Iowa farmer

A north central Iowa farmer says recent rains have been just what his crops need.

Brent Renner grows corn and soybeans near Klemme and tells Brownfield it had been abnormally dry going into the last week of June.

“But we have pretty consistently the last two to three weeks received the rain we needed to keep things going, and the crop has responded tremendously. The corn is just exploding right now and looking really good.”

He says the moisture has had a similar effect on soybeans, but the crop is a little behind.

“We had some really cool, dry conditions to make emergence this spring pretty difficult. And in some cases a lot of replanting, depending on the planting date.”

Renner is starting to side-dress corn and says he might be adjusting nitrogen rates based on how the crop is responding to the moisture.