Wisconsin Farmers Experiencing Weather Whiplash

Thursday, June 13th, 2024 -- 8:00 AM

(Colleen Kottke, Marshfield News Herald) Only a year ago, Wisconsin farmers were in the midst of a "flash drought."

However, according to Colleen Kottke with the Marshfield News Herald, persistent rain showers this year have left standing water in many fields, effectively drowning young corn and soybean plants. Crop producers have experience with weather whiplash events.

After months of wetter-than-normal conditions that stretched back to November 2022, including the wettest winter on record, farmers had all they could do to get crops planted in the spring of 2023.

Then came a large dome of high pressure that anchored itself over Canada, setting in motion lower-than-normal rates of precipitation, accompanied by abnormally high temperatures, winds and radiation, all the ingredients for a flash drought and the fourth driest May on record.

In early March, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported that 90% of the state was facing early drought conditions. Three months later, the trend has reversed. According to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service Crop Report, planting progress for soybeans and corn is 9 to 13 days behind last year.

While 87% of the state's corn is in the ground, 13% of those acres remain unplanted. Farmers are quickly running up on the deadline to plant corn for grain, said Joe Lauer, University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomy and Extension corn specialist.

Rainfall events can create havoc in corn fields, depending on the growth stage of the corn at flooding, frequency and duration of flooding, and air-soil temperature during flooding.

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