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USDA, farmers concerned about soil moisture in Wisconsin

Wisconsin entered winter with good soil moisture levels, but with a dry spring and less than average snowfall, USDA says conditions are drier now than they were last fall.  Twenty-five percent of topsoil is short on moisture, and 7% is very short with sub-soil moisture reported as 18% short and 5% very short.  Windy conditions and the lack of rainfall prompted Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to declare a state of emergency so National Guard members can be activated for wildfire control if needed. Last week’s only significant rainfall was in a small area near the Wisconsin-Illinois-Iowa border where about one inch fell. Snow has melted, and some Central Wisconsin farmers told Brownfield they’re glad it sank in instead of running off.

Sixty-nine percent of winter wheat is in good to excellent condition, down from 84% at the end of November. 

Spring tillage is 8% finished, which is 13 days ahead of average.

Melvin Pittman farms near Plum City in West-central Wisconsin and tells Brownfield he was out more than a week ago using a field cultivator to prepare for oats and alfalfa seeding. “We have fairly heavy soils but the fields I was in were ones I had chisel plowed the fall before, so they had opened up and aired out a lot better. Any ground that was not chiseled was still a little bit too wet at this time.”

Pittman tells Brownfield he wanted to have oats and alfalfa seeded by the weekend and he is not planting soybeans, but soil temperatures were still cool as of last week, so he’s not rushing to get corn in the ground. “I’ll probably wait until the end of April or the very beginning of May. It just depends upon soil temperatures because I prefer to have the corn come up within a week or so of the time we plant it, and I haven’t seen a whole lot of difference between real early-planted corn when it waits three weeks to come up and then later-planted corn when it comes up in a week to ten days.”

Pittman is also concerned about the recent lack of moisture.