By Bob Streit
Columist, Farm News
The tightrope walk of the 2021 growing season continues. Finally, after weeks and months of waiting for widespread rains to fall in the Midwest we are seeing such moisture fall. Luckily this is happening early enough to benefit the seed fill on both major crops and...
Now that we have past the July 4th holiday weekend and the crop forecasters think they have good feel for the crop size of the corn and bean crops. On the producer side we recognize that what we consider normal with weather is not occurring in much of the Midwest. On...
Another page on the calendar gets turned over and we enter the month of July. It is typically the month with the hottest temperatures and less rain received than the crops use, so the plants are relying on deep profile moisture to form the pollen, extend the silk and...
The cropping tightrope walk of 2021 in the Midwest continues. As was reported earlier this week over 50% of the Midwest was in the abnormally dry to some stage of drought. In a year where grain prices have soared due to low supplies and the financial success of...
The 2021 growing season is shaping up and several challenges have already been imposed by nature. Lack of heat, shortages or excesses in moisture, late frosts, and now an excess in temperatures, the entire season seems to be one high wire tightrope walk where each...
As the season progresses into late May there appears to be a big discrepancy for soil moisture levels between different sections of the state. In central Iowa and west, last week consisted of five days with rain but barely one inch of accumulated moisture. That will...
The first portion of the 2021 growing season, the planting routine sprint, is well underway is all parts of the Midwest, and complete or nearly complete in the central part where the planting progress entered a twilight period when it was shut down or running at a...
After one of the fastest warmups and snow melts in late winter we are now encountering we drop into a period where the temps are double digits cooler than normal and snowflakes are predicted for early this week. After the much-delayed planting seasons of 2018 and 2019...
Bob Streit came across these important articles on soybeans and potential early planting problems that he wanted to share. Click on the links below to open the articles. If you open the articles on your phone it may give you the option to 'View' or 'Download' and if...
For about two weeks it was debatable whether or not spring had arrived. Night time temps in the low 20s and daytime highs in the low 40s are not real warm and do not spur soil warmup or plant growth. Now in the last few days the daytime temps are above 60-70 degrees...