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Dry weather helps planting but threatens development

A farmer in southeastern South Dakota says the dry weather made for an efficient planting season but that dryness is a red flag. Robert Walsh farms near Elk Point, South Dakota, about 15 minutes from Sioux City, Iowa,

“We had essentially no rain days which allowed pretty much all the farms down in this area to get gone in probably record pace. On our own farm we got done planting corn at the very end of April. We got done planting beans in mid-May.”

Walsh tells Brownfield Ag News their corn is up – they started side dressing today  and most of their beans are up. But, they are lacking moisture for the long-term, “We have just enough moisture to get things started and we had a few small, tiny rains when we were planting to get things to germinate. Had we not had those tiny rains we would have been in a world of hurt. But we have absolutely no subsoil moisture.”

Walsh says there’s a lot of irrigation in his area which is helpful but, overall, they need very timely rains to grow a decent crop – otherwise they’ll burn up pretty early.

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