News

Agronomist says crops are in decent shape in southern Indiana

Beck’s Agronomist Travis Coleman says although timely rains are needed, many crops in southern Indiana are in good shape.

“In talking with growers every day, that is definitely the first topic of conversation—how dry it is or how dry it has been,” he says. “As I walk a lot of acres, I don’t see that drought stress or heat stress really showing itself today. I’m not as concerned. I do think we need a timely rain here in the next 10 days, but overall, I’m really happy with the current condition of the crop.”  

He tells Brownfield he continues to monitor fields for disease and weed pressure.

“We’ve had relatively low humidity. There’s not a lot of dew in the morning so some of those corn diseases that we typically fight like gray leaf spot or northern corn leaf blight aren’t setting in anytime soon. But, they are something I’m continuing to monitor,” he says. “One thing I’ve noticed is some of our herbicides didn’t get a timely rain to get them activated, so we have some weeds popping up in the fields that I think some farmers are going to get back into them and see maybe their herbicide program didn’t work as well as it has in years past. I don’t want them to jump to conclusions about the herbicide program because again, I don’t know that we’ve always had that activating rainfall for those herbicides.”

Coleman covers southern Indiana. Despite a slow start to planting, he says crops have been set up for success so far with the right conditions and soil moisture.

Audio: Travis Coleman