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Iowa farmer looking for a spring repeat

A corn and soybean farmer in southwest Iowa is hoping the upcoming growing season starts out like the last one.

Mark Peterson of Stanton says 2023 started out nice.

“It was a beautiful spring, things went real well.”

But he tells Brownfield conditions turned dry, to the point he considered not applying in-season nitrogen.

“The nitrogen was booked and we felt like we had to go ahead, and it’s like ‘oh I think we’re throwing this money away.’ But we did go ahead and we got extremely lucky, there was a rain that came through three or four days after that.”

He says the 50 pounds of nitrogen applied at tasseling resulted in a yield boost of around 30 bushels per acre.

Brownfield interviewed Peterson at last week’s Practical Farmers of Iowa Conference in Des Moines.