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Southern Illinois farmer content with planting progress

A south-central Illinois farmer says favorable conditions allowed him to get most of his corn planted last week.

Jared Rose farms corn, soybeans and wheat in Omega, Illinois.

“We are seeing some dry ground; the soil has been breaking up nicely and we have been seeing a lot of progress.”

But he tells Brownfield rain will likely keep him out of the field until Friday.

“I think it is going to be a lot slower this week than it was last week.”

Nonetheless, he says he is content, considering he barely had any corn planted at this point last year. Rose says his biggest concern right now is prices.

“It’s a little scary. It means you’ve got to raise more bushels to break even and obviously we don’t want to just break even, we want to make some money and it looks like it is going to be a tough year for farmers to make money.”

Rose says otherwise he has not experienced many farm-related disruptions from COVID-19. He says he has heard of anhydrous limits in his area, but they use Liquid 32 so they were able to apply their nitrogen on time.