Many Illinois farmers see slow planting progress due to frequent rains, cooler temperatures

Despite statewide planting progress being ahead of the average pace, weather and soil conditions kept many tractors on the sidelines in large portions of central and northern Illinois through mid-April.

However, many finally got a chance to begin or resume fieldwork late last week.

“Things are going pretty well, we’re just working the kinks out,” Michael Deppert, president of the Tazewell County Farm Bureau, told FarmWeek.

Deppert received nearly 5 inches of rain on his farm the first week of April but managed to avoid heavy downpours from more recent storms. He and his father planted about two-thirds of their soybeans and got started with corn as of last week.

“We kind of lucked out,” he said. “Once things kind of dried out, we were able to get rolling and kind of missed some of the other big rains.”

Lance Tarochione, technical agronomist for DeKalb and Asgrow, covers nine counties in west-central Illinois and said progress in that area varies depending on who took advantage of the first planting window in late March.

“If you’ve been very patient, you likely haven’t started yet,” Tarochione told FarmWeek. “If you’ve been very aggressive, you might be half or three-fourths done. The norm would be people that are somewhere in between that have some planting done, but probably not near as much as they would like.”

Severe storms, frequent rains and cooler temperatures this month have kept soil conditions from reaching a favorable level to plant in many northern locations. Tarochione said by the calendar the area isn’t delayed yet, but quick progress downstate makes farmers in the north feel behind in fieldwork.

“We’re probably going to very soon have people planting in conditions that are actually worse than conditions they passed up two or three weeks ago because they thought maybe it was a little too early or they didn’t like the weather forecast,” he said. “Their patience is waning, and they’re going to be pushing things a little more aggressively.”

Tarochione encourages growers to wait for conditions to be fit, even if it means pushing planting well into May.

“We can raise really good corn in central Illinois, planted the 20th of May,” he said. “I’ll take May 20 planted in good conditions over April 20 planted a little on the wet side 10 times out of 10.”

Crops that were planted in March emerged fairly well, Tarochione said, but cooler temperatures have affected stands in some areas, including a field he planted in Monmouth March 30 that was hit by a freeze event April 20.

“The corn that was up is pretty well froze off in the low areas,” he said.

“Frost is never uniform across the field, so you can find plants that were froze off at the ground that look like they’re dead and the plant next to it might be barely touched.”

He also shared reports about crusting of early planted soybeans due to hard rains following planting.

USDA reported 20% of soybeans were planted statewide as of April 19, compared to the five-year average of 7%. Corn planting reached 13% by the same date, up from 4% the week prior and 5 percentage points ahead of average. Meanwhile, 3% of the corn crop had emerged, compared to 1% at the same time last year.

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.