The planting pace is slow in South Dakota, as well as across farm country.
That’s according to Kevin McNew, who is Chief Economist at the Farmer's Business Network.
He says there’s been an epic problem across the corn belt of the country.
McNew paints a bleak picture of impending weather.
“As we look at the maps today, that rain is expected to come again,” McNew says. “Farmers got a bit of a window in the last few days and into the next few days. But after that, the parade of precipitation fires back up and we see nothing but unrelenting rainstorms that really don’t give us much of a break. I don’t think this story is over by any means, even once the crop is in the ground. I think we’re going to have struggles this growing season with very wet weather, cooler than normal weather, which is not good for yield and development of this crop.”
The latest South Dakota crop report shows 64 percent of corn planted so far this year, as opposed to 100 percent last year. Forty-three percent of soybeans are in the ground, as opposed to 95 percent in 2018.