While planting season is well underway, many farmers agree a week of sunshine is just what they need to finish getting their crops in the ground.
While most local farmers have finished planting corn, they have been waiting for the soil to dry up a bit to tackle planting soybeans.
Tribbett farmer John Mark Looney said they finished planting corn a couple weeks ago, and they are ready to start the soybean planting process as soon as the ground dries some more.
“I think we’re going to hit a dry spell next week,” he said. “Everything is going pretty well, we didn’t have to do a lot of field work this year in the spring because we got a lot of it done last fall.”
Despite the sporadic rainfalls, Looney said the planting process has been going smoothly, and even better than last year.
“Compared to last year, we started planting a month earlier this year than we did last year,” he said.
At the Loughborough Plantation in Winterville, Bill Payne said they, too, have been ahead of last year’s schedule
“I think everybody’s ahead of where they were last year,” he said.
With all of their corn planted, Payne said they’ve spent this week putting fertilizer and herbicide on the crops.
Now that everything is “looking good,” Payne said they are ready to switch gears and focus solely on planting soy beans, which he said they are already about a third of the way done doing.
“Its been good corn growing weather,” Payne said. “Now next week, hopefully, we’ll get some sunshine so we can finish planting these beans.”
Hollandale famer Chico Williams said they finished planting corn in the first week of April. While they’ve gotten about 20% of their soybeans planted, he said they are also waiting for the next dry spell to finish that planting process.
While the sporadic rainfalls have created pauses in their planting process, Williams said it is normal to see this amount of rain in April.
“Some Aprils are better than others but this one has been fairly typical,” he said. “Even though we’ve had these showers, they have not been real big or detrimental.”
Despite the rains they have experienced, Williams said they have not been heavy enough to cause concern for farmers.
“Everything’s on schedule. Everybody probably wants to be further along, but I think we’re in good shape,” Williams said. “If it dries up next week, that will still give us plenty of time in April to plant beans. If it’s not in April, we’ll just plant them in May.”
NASS reports
According to the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistic Service’s (NASS) Mississippi weekly Crop Progress and Condition report released April 12, corn is more than halfway finished being planted in the state.
Corn is 58% planted across the state, considerably ahead of where they were this time last year at 30%. Thirty-seven percent of that corn has already emerged.
Rice is 20% planted across the state and just 2% has emerged, which is also higher than where it was this time last year at 5% planted and no emergence.
Soybeans have just barely started getting planted with 1% done across the state.
Cotton has not started being planted.
