News

Planting early presents its own issues

A crop scientist says there is no significant yield advantage to planting in late March or early April. Emerson Nafziger is with the University of Illinois.

“It’s not terribly risky to plant that early, but also there’s not a lot of reward for it” says Nafziger.

He tells Brownfield weather conditions during the growing season determines yields more than the planting date.

“The best year we’ve ever had for corn was in 2014. We had almost none of it planted by the end of April that year, it was too wet. We had such favorable conditions during the growing season then that we ended up with a 200 bushel average yield,” says Nafziger.

Nafziger says weather conditions in early spring are typically wetter which could prohibit uniform crop emergence and reduce yields.

Audio: Emerson Nafziger, Crop Science, University of Illinois