Farmers in much of Iowa made good progress on corn planting last week, but that wasn’t true in the northwest. In the USDA Crop Progress report 21 percent of the crop was planted, just slightly behind the 26-percent average. However, Iowa State University Extension Agronomist Joel DeJong says in northwest Iowa that figure drops to 5-percent or less.

That, combined with an extremely wet extended forecast, has many farmers already asking about switching to shorter season corn hybrids. DeJong advises producers to stay with full season corn hybrids until mid to late May or they may see yield loss.

He says it’s also too soon to consider switching acres from corn to soybeans.

DeJong says in the last two weeks a lot of manure has been hauled in northwest Iowa, but hardly any tillage has been done.