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One Missouri farmer’s year in review

A northern Missouri farmer says he was playing catch-up all year long because of replanting from early wet conditions.

Looking at 2019 in review, Gary Porter tells Brownfield overall this year was a little below average.

“There were so many places in the field that yielded better than we ever did before, but there were so many places in the field that were zero because it got drown out,” Porter said.

He said this was because higher, sandy ground that usually is too dry was able to be kept wet enough to increase production.

Porter says some of his best production this year came from replanted crops.

“You take that seed out of the bag and put it in that cold, wet soil and just does a shock to the seed,” he said. “And it just never does really recover from it like you’d like for it to. We knew it wasn’t the best option, but we were trying to get something done considering the conditions that were dealt us.”

Porter says years like this one help farmers to find problem areas like tiling issues and other draining problems to fix. It wasn’t all bad in 2019 Porter says, having a record sorghum yield this year.