2015 US Corn Belt Crop Tour: South Dakota

Jul 13, 2015

Seventh state in a 12-state tour

Moe Agostino, Chief Commodity Strategist for Farms.com Risk Management’s team is on a 12-state tour of the US Corn Belt.

Throughout the state visits, Agostino visits with local farmers to get a better understanding of how the fields are performing and the possible impacts it could have on commodity pricing.

The team visited Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska before making their way to South Dakota – the 7^th largest corn producing state in the United States.

South Dakota

In the previous six states, too much moisture was hindering crop production. Flash flooding and standing water made it difficult for farmers to get in the fields. In South Dakota, the cool temperatures seem to be a big factor farmers are battling.

“They get some heat, but local farmers are suggesting it’s a little too cool at night,” Agostino said standing in front of a corn field in Yankton County.

“Not really as much as we need, we’re a little bit short but we’re not that far behind,” said Russell Buchanan from Irene, South Dakota. “We’ve had 80-85°F days (26-29°C) but it gets down in the upper 50s (15°C) at night. We need it to stay around 70 (21°C).”

The unpredictability of the weather is having an impact on the South Dakota temperatures, but so are the recent fires in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

“The wildfires up in Canada,” said Darren Hefty of Ag PhD. “That smoke has been dipping and so we’ve had days where we were supposed to be 85-plus and its 75 degrees.

Be sure to continue to follow Moe Agostino on his US Corn Belt Crop Tour on Twitter using the hashtag #CornBelt15.

The tour’s next stop will be in North Dakota.

Video: Treating Sheep For Lice!

We are treating our sheep for lice today at Ewetopia Farms. The ewes and rams have been rubbing and scratching, plus their wool is looking patchy and ragged. Itchy sheep are usually sheep with lice. So, we ran the Suffolk and Dorset breeding groups through the chutes and treated them all. This treatment will have to be done again in two weeks to make sure any eggs that hatched are destroyed too. There was a lot of moving of sheep from pen to pen around the sheep barn but by all the hopping and skipping the sheep were doing, I think they enjoyed the day immensely! We hope you do too!