{This story is by Bill Pickett.}
Vermilion County’s corn and soybean crops continue to advance despite the very warm temperatures and spotty periods of heavy rain. Steve Fourez farms in the southern part of the county and described how crops are looking there…
{‘’At least in my half of Vermilion county – in the southern half — things are looking really pretty respectable. I think you get up north of Interstate 74 here in Vermilion County, and they got a little rougher spring and caught a little too much rain in some of these rains that have come through,’’ said Fourez. ‘’So actually the crop overall is maybe a little better than average – but we’ll see.’’}
Fourez notes the crops are entering a critical part of the growing season…
(The photo is of a soybean field near Bismarck taken on July 19, 2020 by Bill Pickett.)
{‘’For especially corn production, pollination is what makes the crop. And high temperatures and lack of rainfall can really throw a monkey wrench in the works,’’ said Fourez during an interview with VermilionCountyFirst.com News. ‘’And then when we get into August we will need good rainfall because that’s what fills the soybean pods out, and makes the bean crop. So Mother Nature has still got a ways to go to see whether she’s going to bless us, or make us pay,’’
Fourez keeps in touch with farmers in other parts of Illinois and says some areas have been impacted by heavy thunderstorms….
{‘’Up towards Bloomington they had some really high winds that tended to lay the corn over flat on the ground. And that’s never a good thing. And the more ponding you’ve got – and usually those ponding places in the field where we have standing water that sits for a period of time – we’ll pay for that going into the ’21 crop because it affects the soil texture and how good of a seed bed we can put down for the next crop,’’ added Fourez.
Something else that has farmers concerned this year is the COVID 19 pandemic, which Fourez says has impacted the markets…
{‘’We’re probably 50-cents a bushel below on both corn and beans where we might have expected to be at this time of the year without the virus coming on. And really it’s been poor timing for us as farmers because as we were going into the 2020 crop year, we thought we kind of had things worked out with the trade agreement – and were expecting to bump up our export business and let that help hold the market – well, this virus thing – to a certain extent – negatively impacted the trade agreement – especially with China,’’ added Fourez.}
Fourez says farmers are ‘’walking a financial tightrope’’ this year.
