Crop progress varies from state to state and from field to field depending on whether crops were planted early or late, received a lot of precipitation or too little and other factors. Talon Becker, a commercial agriculture specialist with University of Illinois Extension, said there has been some crop loss from wet weather he has seen around Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. He encourages farmers to scout for stalk rot and other conditions that could affect their crops.
“In corn there are not as many rot spots, but to know for sure, farmers can dig up plants and send them to the crop lab,” he said. Still, Becker said everything is looking pretty good. He encourages those who think they may have a crop disease or fungus to make sure it goes beyond the edge of their fields before they take the effort and expense to spray.
“Currently, it’s pretty much wait and see for harvest and most of the corn has pollinated at this point,” he said. In the most recent farmdoc crop update, Doug Gucker, local food systems and small farm educator in Dewitt, Macon and Piatt counties, noted that in general, all crop are looking good with very few issues other than weather-related problems. He noted that the previous week’s surge in aphid populations was a thing of the past, with rainstorms, disease and predators sending the populations into a nosedive.
Reagan Tibbs, an Illinois Extension commercial agriculture educator, reported on conditions in Logan County, stating the crop progress remained steady but that humid and hot days are perfect conditions for crop diseases to flourish. No reports of disease had been made in the area. LaSalle County Commercial Ag Educator Emily Hansen said that overall, crops were looking good and progressing well, but weeds were getting very large in some fields.
Anthony Ohmes, field specialist with University of Missouri Extension, said corn he had observed in Missouri was at full dent, meaning the ears are filling up with starch and will start to dry out. He said farther south there was some corn that would be ready to be harvested sometime in the next 7-14 days. Soybeans were everything from butter bean to finished out maturity, he said.
He also noted that wheat field beans were flowering. “Early beans have a long way to go,” Ohmes said. “With the dry and hot weather, there has been more evaporative loss.
” He said they really need rain, preferably sometime in the next 10 days. But he said compared to the last two growing seasons, things are looking good for all crops. Ohmes noted that Hurricane Beryl blew some southern rust into Missouri.
He said there have been a few reports of red crown rot further north in the state. “There has been no sudden death or airborne pathogen disease on a wide scale,” Ohmes said. “Until we finish the soybean crop, we are not completely out of the woods when it comes to podworm and stink bugs.
” Ohmes encourages farmers to continue to scout their fields. Mark Licht, associate professor and extension cropping systems specialist with the Iowa State University Extension, said Iowa has seen good rains and moisture for corn but that soybeans have been affected by a loss of moisture due to transpiration. Corn has made it out of pollination — even the late-planted crops — but the variability in timing of tasseling was noticeable.
The earlier crop is close to dough but mainly at milk stage. “This is one of the first years I’ve seen that crops are generally in good condition,” Licht said. He did note that some areas of the state experienced drought during pollination and there were flooding issues in June in northwest Iowa, southwest Minnesota and South Dakota.
Licht noted that the state did have a few storms with hail and tornadoes but there was no widespread weather event that knocked out production areas. He said that early-planted soybeans look strong, while the late-planted are short but have a good dark green color. “We have lost top-end soybean yield because of the later planting,” Licht said.
“But I would be really surprised if we don’t have trend line yields or higher. Things look really good.”.
