A late planting season mixed with recent excessive rainfall could have potential impacts on this year’s harvest.  

Dallas County Extension Field Agronomist Meaghan Anderson says throughout the beginning of the planting season it was wet and cold as the rain kept occurring which kept farmers out of the field and she describes how the most recent significant rainfalls could impact crops that are growing.

“Now of course we are getting kind of inundated with some very unusually high rainfall totals that are going to slow everything down at this point.”

According to the latest Crop Progress and Condition Report from the Iowa Department of Agriculture, the topsoil moisture of 78-percent is rated as adequate and subsoil moisture is rated at 74-percent adequate as well. Anderson tells Raccoon Valley Radio this moisture will hold for quite some time but it has reached a level that is not good for the crops. 

“Of course at this point we have saturated soils, we are getting a lot of soil drainage and then of course we are just trying to reduce those pond sizes as quickly as possible and so we certainly have had enough rainfall that at this point it’s detrimental to the crop. I would have taken that rainfall over a six week time frame, particularly when the corn was flowering if I could order it but that’s not the way it came for us so far.”

The crop report shows that 98-percent of corn has been planted and 94-percent of soybeans have been planted.