As the harvest season continues to progress, the lack of moisture has helped in terms of getting crops off the field sooner than normal, but it also brings lots of concerns.
Dallas County Iowa State University Extension Field Agronomist Meaghan Anderson tells Raccoon Valley Radio that Iowa is going through a dry spell, exemplifying that the month of September was posted as the driest September ever recorded in the state. She illustrates that having conversations with farmers, they’re reporting very dry corn stocks are causing problems with harvesting. Anderson admits that the abnormally dry conditions are resulting in a monetary decrease. She pinpoints the questions she’s getting the most from farmers.
“Things like soil sampling in the really dry conditions (and) things like our fall nitrogen that we often apply, which would be anhydrous ammonia, ‘We do need some moisture in the soil because the anhydrous ammonia is going to actually attach to moisture in the soil, and so if it’s very, very dry, what happens to that?’ And unfortunately the answer is it’s going to go to the atmosphere, and so until we get some moisture, it’s unlikely that we’re going to see some of these fall things happening, or if they are happening, they’re going to need to change from the ways we normally do them.”…