The rain hasn’t slowed down Aaron Alexander, product agronomist with DuPont Pioneer down much, but he does say there could be some replant situations out there due to heavy rains and some hail:
“Yeah, I’m thinking this week is going to be a time to finish up our corn plot planting, I think we may have some growers that are going to run into a re-plant situation. But, other than that, the crops in North Carolina, I think we’re winding down on our corn planting, and ready to move on to soybeans.”
Alexander discusses the plans for soybeans this year:
“What we’re looking at in soybeans this year, of course our variety strip trials this year, as we do every year. We’re also going to be looking at some population trials, looking at determinates and indeterminates, probably going to be looking at some fungicide work as well, and looking at one versus two active ingredients. Doing a few different things there. So, we’ve got some work coming around, just trying to figure out to how best to hit that 100 bushel mark, stay there, then hit 150.”
The rebound in the prices for soybeans has made a decision for farmers that may have been on the fence between soybeans and sorghum:
“Yeah, I think in March, I think we were looking at a little more sorghum demand than what we’re seeing right now, and I think we’re going to see our regular amount of sorghum acres, but I was anticipating a little higher acreage this year with soybeans where they were at about a month ago. But, with the nice rebound that soybean s have had, I think we’re going to see some guys switch back to soybeans this year and try to make some profit with soybeans in a hard environment.”
While growing slow, Alexander says that the corn crop looks good:
“We’ve had corn in the ground for a while now, had a meeting in Nashville and had two very good growers put the plots in the ground while I was in Tennessee. So, everything started out looking pretty decent, we had some warm temperatures there to start off March, and everybody got excited, started getting corn in the ground, then we were cool and cloudy for a while. So, we did get corn in the ground, got a good stand, but it had grown off it started off really, really slow, but everything that went in a little later, end of March, first of April is looking really, really good.”
Alexander explains some of the trials they have for corn this year:
“We’ve got population studies in across the state, going to be doing some fungicide work in corn, going to be looking at V-6 only applications, see if that’s something that more of our Piedmont growers, or our growers that don’t really have access to airplanes or helicopters can get away with and help add some profit to their corn crop.”
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