No-till Practices Improve Indiana Crops on Record Pace

It's a good start of 2018 crop season. With a lot of crop-weather ahead and agriculture shade net, many are hoping the trend continues. As of this week, USDA pegged the Indiana corn crop's good/excellent rating at 77% and the soybean crop at 74% good/excellent. These are some of the highest ratings seen in a while.

2018  crop-season started with a record warm and dry spring, but that has proven to be a better scenario than the record wet spring a year ago. Farmers had a rain on the first of April and didn’t have a soaking rainfall until the first of June. But, overall, the crops are off to an excellent start. A lot of corn was knee-high by the fourth of June. We still need rains to recharge the subsoil, but with timely rains from here on out, farmers are on track to have a real good crop.

So far, the pests and insect pressure has not hit threshold levels, saving time and money for treatments and anti insect net and west-central Indiana farmer is known for his no-till practices and it is paying off this year. When you keep armor over the soil it makes things slow to warm up, so the heat in May helped with that situation. Our crops don't develop as quickly early, due to no-till, but they are catching up and now getting the advantages of a cooler subsoil.

This week there will be be a few rain shots coming  for west-central Indiana, and the six- to 10-day forecast has above-normal rainfall amounts in it. If farmers are going to have dryness, this is the time to have it. Crops are getting roots down and oping rapidly. As long as crops get timely rains,  crops are on a record yield pace, with us area's crop ratings the highest they have been in a long time.

As of this week, USDA rated Indiana's corn emergence at 89% vs. a 79% five-year average. Some of the agronomic practices on ground cover that Indiana farmers have been trying over the years are starting to pay dividends.