Northwest Iowa Crop Conditions

Warm and dry weather patterns finally allowed the wet spots to be planted. The weather change also pushed corn
and soybeans to grow quickly. This time of year is always impressive to see how fast the crops can grow. Crops
are generally looking good in most of NW Iowa, but they are far from perfect.

The biggest concerns right now with corn are uneven plant size, spotty population, and poor root development.
The troubles we had with cold wet planting conditions had a possibly season long effect to this year’s corn crop.
Uneven emergence leads to uneven plant size which causes competition and potential problems with pollination.
Root problems can be caused by side-wall compaction, tillage worked too wet, shallow seed depth, totally
waterlogged soils, herbicide injury, and the lack of N close to the root zone. The best things to help the corn
overcome these problems are steady small rains and normal temps.

The grain markets continue to improve because of weather concerns and favorable outside influences. South
American crop size is smaller than expected which is helping U.S. exports. We are hearing more and more talk of
possible La Nina this summer leading to weather problems for U.S. crops, although U.S. crops were very highly
rated again this week by USDA. These things are already priced into the market, it will take more weather
problems in large areas to keep this grain rally going.