A May start for Minnesota’s corn growers
Written by Jonathan Eisenthal
Farmers in the southern tier of Minnesota made the most of a week of fine spring weather and made major progress in this year’s corn planting. Farmers in the central portion of the state are getting started this week.
“Corn planting reached 38 percent complete, 9 days ahead of last year but 1 day behind the 5-year average,” according to the May 8 Minnesota Crop Progress report from the USDA. “Corn emergence reached 2 percent.”
After a winter that felt long and hard, farmers in the southern tier of Minnesota got busy planting right around May 1.
“We are probably about half done with corn in our area, maybe a little more,” said Wes Beck, who farms in St. James, west of Mankato. “We had a really good week last week. The weather was favorable. Farmers in our area got out and did what they love to do, and that’s planting corn. Field conditions are above average. Really good moisture conditions. We are a little wetter than we think we are, on the surface, but subsoil is probably a little dry still. We always need timely rains.”
Harvest 2022 was the end of a second year of drought across Minnesota, so the added moisture is welcome.
Richard Syverson in Pope County and Ellyn Oelfke in Hamburg, west of the Twin Cities, reported that they would be starting planting May 9.
“After last year, I am just delighted to be planting in ‘single-digit’ May,” said Syverson, president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association. Though cold and wet weather has delayed planting for many Minnesota farmers this year, spring 2022 had a much longer stretch of cool and wet conditions, and Syverson even had some land that was declared “prevented plant.”
In comparison, the 2023 growing season looks like a good start. Syverson said: “I am pretty encouraged. Things are drying up nicely, considering how much snow we had. Yesterday was a warm, sunny day. … We don’t have standing water in many places. Things are looking good.”
It was a highly unusual winter, according to Syverson. They had measurable rain in December, January, and February. The rain then created layers of ice that made the rural roads treacherous through most of the winter. When the roads weren’t dangerous, they were a mess.
Beck reported that St. James saw roughly twice as much snow as in a usual winter. Because the thick snow cover insulated the ground, the frost was not as deep as it can get, and the soil thawed more quickly, allowing a good part of the snowmelt to replenish soil moisture in a welcome way.
Oelfke, who farms with her husband, Jacob, was planning to be out May 9, to start their fourth growing season on their farm.
“We have some wet spots, but a lot of our wetter low spots have dried out pretty well,” Oelfke said. “With all the snow we had, we were seeing a lot of moisture hanging up on the side hills in a lot of our fields, so it just made for a lot of mucky, muddy, not-fun experience out in the field. … Luckily we were able to get in and get towards finishing a tiling project.”
The Oelfkes are excited to have added a tractor and a new air seeder for their soybeans, which will allow them to plant their corn and soybeans without having to swap equipment out. It should make for a quicker, more efficient planting process. They no-till all their corn and soybeans.
Beck and Syverson report that they can proceed with planting in much the same way they have done in recent years, though Syverson moved from a 12-row to a 16-row planter, to help handle additional land that his son, Paul, has rented this year.
“We are following the same formulas and recipes as we have — we plan to raise a good crop every year,” Beck said. “If we don’t plan on a good crop, I can tell you what we are going to get.”
Both Syverson and Beck plant 60 percent to 65 percent of their land to corn and the rest to soybeans. The rotation is dictated partly by the economic advantage of corn and partly by agronomic concerns: portions of their soils have high pH, which is not well suited to raising soybeans. In addition to his corn and soybean acres, Syverson plants about 70 acres to hay, to support a sheep operation run by his wife, Vicki, and Paul.
The USDA Crop Progress Report for May 8 summed up the situation in Minnesota: “Warmer temps and lighter rains enabled Minnesota farmers to get out in their fields with 4.5 days suitable for fieldwork for the week ending May 7, 2023…Fieldwork included spreading manure and fertilizer, tillage, and planting. No livestock losses were reported and some cattle were moved to pasture. Topsoil moisture supplies were rated 3 percent very short, 6 percent short, 72 percent adequate, and 19 percent surplus. Subsoil moisture supplies were rated 3 percent very short, 11 percent short, 72 percent adequate, and 14 percent surplus.”
