Cold April could stunt planting progress in Upper Midwest

A cold April could delay planting in many parts of the Midwest.

Mark Mueller grows corn and soybeans in northeast Iowa.

“This will not be an early spring, soil temperatures are not coming up (and) I’d say we’re about 20 degrees cooler than normal.”

He tells Brownfield it’s also been abnormally dry.

“We have no reserves in the soil. We’ll have enough to get the crop started, and they do say ‘plant in the dust and your bins will bust.’ Well yeah, but below that dust there’s usually 10 to 20 inches of water in the soil.”

Mueller, a district director for the Iowa Corn Growers Association, says they’ll need rains to come “in the nick of time” this year.

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