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Holding out for soybean saving rain

Getting rain soon is critical, especially for soybeans. Missouri farmer Kevin Casner farms Carol County river bottom ground, which has provided some buffering from drought effects, but he says heat is working against what little reserves of moisture are in his soil.
“The beans are trying to set pods right now and they’re blooming and this heat’s blasting the blooms off,” said Casner during an interview with Brownfield Ag News, “and they’ll probably bloom three times and quit, so if we could get a rain, the beans will come on. They’ll be little late, but we could still have a good crop of beans if we could just get the moisture.”

Plagued by Missouri River flooding last season, Casner says his crops began this growing season beautifully until there was no rain. Including snow melt, he’s counted 13.7 inches of precipitation since January 1 – less than half of what’s needed to grow a crop. Casner is losing confidence that he’ll see the rain he needs to finish his soybeans.

“It isn’t real favorable when [forecasters] talk about a 50 percent chance of rain and you can’t get one at 80 percent,” said Castner. “Your neighbor gets [a rain] a quarter-mile down the road, he might get five inches and you might get passed by completely.”

AUDIO: Kevin Casner (5 min)