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Market has farmer wishing he could plant more beans

A central Wisconsin farmer wishes he could plant more soybeans, but he’s sticking to his original plan. 

John Eron farms in heavy clay west of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.  He’s planting corn as planned because it’s too late for him to switch over to soybeans. “We’d like to just because of the markets crashing, and we have a lot more success with beans here, but the problem we run into is with the manure that we get from a neighboring farm, those fields were already spread at rates that if we put the beans out there, we’re going to have far too much growth in the vegetative state, so we’ve got to put more into corn.”

Eron says everything is greening up quickly, meaning a little extra fieldwork ahead of the planter. “A little bit of, let’s call it rescue tillage in a few areas, just because we don’t want to have to go back and throw Roundup in a pre-emerge if we don’t have to, especially on a 40-acre field where there may only be an acre or two that’s starting to green up.”

Eron says this year, he’ll have about 600 acres of corn and 200 acres of soybeans.