Corn planting earlier than recent years

Planters in some areas are in the field earlier than usual. It’s the case for Brownfield reporter and American Countryside host Andrew McCrea, who’s celebrating the fact that at his place in northwest Missouri, he’s been planting corn since Monday.

“Usually for us, if we’re beginning by April 20, we feel like it’s been an early year, so this has been a real early start for us,” said McCrea Thursday.

By McCrea’s account, that’s after a cold, wet winter with record snowfall. He didn’t expect to be in the field this early.

“The consensus in northwest Missouri was well, it’s going to be a late planting season, but the end of March the moisture shut off and then we began to get dry weather and we’ve missed a shower or two and the ground settled out and we were ready to go,” said McCrea.

Forecasts call for precipitation to move through his area by the weekend, which may force an exit from the field for a short while, says McCrea.

“That would be alright,” he says. “We have 300 acres of corn in the ground and we could use a little shower; it’s almost a little dry. That’s weird to say this time of year, but we could use a little shower.”

McCrea, a former Missouri State FFA officer and National FFA officer, was taking time away from planting to attend the Missouri FFA Convention in Columbia. His observation following the trip from his farm down to Columbia is that very few growers were planting by mid-week.

AUDIO: Andrew McCrea (6 min. MP3)