One field agronomist is concerned about the additional rainfall causing potential issues with crops that are being planted.

Landus Cooperative Field Agronomist Dan Bjorklund cautions that while drought conditions are being relieved and soil moisture levels are replenishing, different crop diseases could become an issue early on in the growing season. He warns that soybeans with as much precipitation as the soils have gotten can produce harmful fungi such as root rot and damping off diseases.

“Make sure you use seed treatment on beans, because you are planting into a petri dish, a field type of situation with all those harmful fungi out there and they will kill the beans.”

Bjorklund advises there are other diseases that could become a reality for corn is tar spot, which are lesions that develop on the leaves of corn. 

“The only year that I saw it really have yield impact was two years ago and it was in northeast Iowa because they had 25 inches of rain where over here (in west central Iowa) we had 10-15 (inches). By the time we went through the season, we could find tar spot in every field and it’s throughout the state now. So the inoculant for the disease is there all it needs are the weather conditions to favor it and we start to pick up tar spot it could be problematic because that disease in northeast Iowa had a 30-50 bushel (per acre) yield hit.”

Bjorklund adds for farmers to use their trusted field agronomist to scout for these types of disease and develop a treatment plan so that yields are not heavily impacted when harvest season starts late this fall.