Extensive spring floods delay Indiana soybean planting

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — As rain-soaked soils begin to dry in Indiana, farmers with soybean acreage left to plant should now be planting mid-season soybean varieties, said a Purdue University expert.

“In general, total rainfall across the southern third of the state is running as much as 10 to 15 inches above normal for the year with extensive flooding,” said Purdue agronomist Ellsworth Christmas. “Soybean planting has obviously been delayed and has now been delayed long enough for farmers to consider changing maturity groups.”

But because mid-season soybean varieties tend to yield lower than full-season varieties, Christmas suggests planting a few extra.

“Seeding rates should be increased by 15 to 20 percent to promote shading, taller plants, and increased pod height and number of nodes per acre,” he said. “This will help offset the reduced yields caused by delayed planting.”

Planting later than normal does mean that farmers will be harvesting crops a little bit later, but Christmas said harvest shouldn’t be delayed the same amount of time as planting.

“Unlike corn, which requires a certain number of growing degree days to mature, soybeans are more sensitive to day length,” he said. “As the day length shortens later in the growing season, soybean maturity speeds up. In general, for each three days planting is delayed, harvest is delayed only one day.”

While there is still time for farmers to get their soybeans into the ground, Christmas warned that there does come a point when late becomes too late.

“A commonly used rule of thumb to stop planting soybeans is 90 days prior to the first 32 degree frost for a given area within the state,” Christmas said. “This means that the cutoff date for the Bluffton area in northeastern Indiana is June 30, while in the Lafayette area it is July 5. Soybean planting should cease in most of the southern half of Indiana by July 10, except for the southwest corner, where planting can occur up until July 15.”

USDA report: 9 percent of Indiana corn, soybean crops flooded

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Recent heavy rains have flooded 9 percent of the corn acreage, 9 percent of the soybean acreage and 5 percent of the winter wheat crop, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s crop report released June 16.

The southwest district of the state, which includes Evansville, Freelandville, Shoals, Stendal and Vincennes, received the most crop damage with 16 percent of the areas corn acreage flooded, as well as the soybean acreage. Six percent of the wheat acreage was reported as flooded in the southwest district.

The southwest district was followed closely by the southcentral district, in terms of crop acreage flooded — 13 percent for both corn and soybeans and 9 percent for flooded wheat acreage. The southcentral district includes the areas surrounding Leavenworth, Oolitic and Tell City.

These numbers come from questions added to the USDA’s weekly crop progress survey in Indiana.

“We added the flood numbers to the weekly crop progress report because everyone wanted to know how the floods were affecting Indiana,” said Greg Matli, deputy director of the Indiana office for USDA’s National Agriculture Statistics Service located at Purdue University. “Calls were coming in from the governor’s office, Farm Service Agency offices, Chicago Board of Trade and newspapers wanting information.

“There was obviously a demand and we already had the system in place to get that information, so we decided to add a few questions to our weekly survey and now people know what’s going on.”

Indiana has 97 percent of its corn planted with 93 percent emerged and only 55 percent of it is rated in good to excellent condition. Hoosier soybean growers have 80 percent of their crop planted with 70 percent emerged and 52 percent considered in good to excellent condition.