A cold and wet start to the planting season has farmers slightly behind where they historically have been in years past.

At this point in the season farmers are approximately two weeks behind on both planting corn and soybeans compared to where they were last season and also behind the five year average as well. Dallas County Extension Field Agronomist Meaghan Anderson says multiple factors are to blame.

“With those cool temperatures, that was the primary driver to start with to keep everybody out of the field and then we started getting rainfall on top of that so we’ve had this combination of factors that resulted in a fairly significant delay.”

Anderson tells Raccoon Valley Radio that while there has been a delay in the planting season a lot of work has been completed in a short amount of time as during the week ending in May 15th, farmers planted 43-percent of the corn. Anderson says while it planting season might not be completed as fast as in previous years it should still be completed within a good amount of time.

“Right now things look good that we will be able to complete planting in a timely-manner, certainly not nearly as quickly as we have the past couple years but definitely getting it done within a reasonable amount of time.”

At this point farmers have planted 57-percent of corn and 34-percent of soybeans.