In an article posted last week I described the effects of rainfall and standing water on corn plants, especially corn roots, and what this might mean for corn crop prospects. Here, we’ll consider the extent to which damage from wet soils can be addressed by management during the second half of the 2021 season.
 
A short trip on Saturday made clear that a lot of corn and soybeans in fields and parts of fields where water hasn’t stood are in outstanding shape, and shows no sign of needing anything more than sunshine and a little more water during the rest of the season in order to produce high yields. Between July 11 and July 18 in Illinois, good + excellent ratings moved up, from 60 to 65% for corn and from 56 to 60% for soybeans. We hope that this improvement can continue as soils dry this week and as quantities of sunshine return to normal.
 
It’s also worth noting that management decisions for fields covered by crop insurance are somewhat different than those without insurance. Decisions to take insurance, which are being made now in fields with large areas of standing water, generally means that no more inputs will be applied in those fields. It may be difficult, especially in fields with both very good and very poor areas as a result of drainage patterns, to make coverage (and therefore further management) decisions. Drones may help.
 
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