This year’s planting season has been a welcome change of pace for most Iowa farmers from the last few years, as nearly all the corn crop has emerged and most soybeans have been planted, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The latest Crop Progress and Conditions report shows there were 4.8 suitable days for fieldwork last week for Iowa farmers. Corn condition is rated at 83% good to excellent, and soybean emergence has reached 93%, almost three weeks ahead of last year and nine days ahead of the five-year average. Guthrie Center farmer C.W. Thomas and his family manage 3,500 acres of row crops and a few hundred stock cows. Thomas comments on this year’s planting, “We’ve had a pretty resilient spring, got a lot of work done early and the spring was very easy to get some field preparations done. And some of those things that we put off because we didn’t have time for the last year or two, we got some of that stuff caught up and conservation practices and that sort of thing, so it’s been a very easy spring. Those days that we couldn’t go in the field we still had things that we could work on farms and we have livestock also, so we’re in very good shape.”

One-quarter of the first alfalfa hay cutting was also completed last week, with hay condition rating 75% good to excellent. Grain movement from farm to facilities has also been noted, and pasture condition remains at 70% good to excellent.