There’s still plenty of time for the crop to be made this season, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to get out in your fields and do some scouting. Out in northeast Iowa, Eric Oberbroeckling of Oberbroeckling Enterprises said their fields look pretty good- and possibly better than average- but are still far from record-setting.
“Things look good,” Oberbroeckling said. “We started out I would say with timely rains before things went in the ground. Went through a dry spell from the end of May until about the first part of July, for 6 weeks no rainfall we finally got some good timely rains first part of July and probably average of half to three-quarter inch a week thereafter. So, some of the signs we had committed earlier definitely getting masked by good rainfall here. But by and large, we’re sitting pretty good right now as far as his operation goes.”
Oberbroeckling said farming practices, including no till, have likely played a large role in the current quality crop condition.
“We’re up here in the driftless area of Northeast Iowa,” Oberbroeckling said. “We’re rolling; we’re hilly. A lot of highly erodible ground. No till really does cut down on the amount of erosion we see during those three-inch rains in the spring. The no till really does help keep the soil in place and also just from fuel and time and dollars standpoint, doing heavy tillage at 16 to 20 inches deep with a $400,000 tractor burning 25 gallons of fuel an hour. There’s a large cost involved in that as well.”
Oberbroeckling added that they have seen no yield penalty from their no till practices.
