News

Racing the calendar to finish planting corn

After battling Mother Nature all spring – southwest Indiana farmer Ben Kron is racing the calendar to finish planting corn this week.  “Here in the past couple of days we have really been going hard trying to get those last few acres of corn in the ground while we still can before June,” he says.  “Most guys I’d say are about done and going to call it quits on planting corn and switch over to beans.”

He tells Brownfield this spring’s wet weather has forced him to deviate from his original planting intentions.  “We’re going to be switching a lot of our acres to bean,” he says.  “We moved some of our bean acres that were on the dry side to corn – so we’re not doing too bad.  We’re within about 200-300 acres of what we should have out for corn.”

Kron says the corn crop will need a nitrogen boost a little later in the growing season.  “We have a lot of acres that w’re going to have to side-dress with anhydrous or liquid,” he says.  “If it’s too wet some guys are going to look at flying on urea with an airplane.”

The latest weekly crop report has just 43 percent of Indiana’s corn crop rated good to excellent – the lowest in the nation.

AUDIO: Ben Kron, southwest Indiana farmer