As the calendar approaches mid-June, farmers in areas of the state still struggling with wet planting conditions are deciding whether to plant corn, switch to soybeans or apply to crop unseeded acreage.
Agronomists and agricultural industry leaders attending a virtual Agribusiness Breakfast in Ridgetown, Ont., on Tuesday did their best to assess the impact the wet weather has had on the planting and cropping decisions currently facing many farmers across southwestern Ontario.
“I can’t think of a single farmer in my neighborhood who’s finished planting,” Adam Pfeffer, market development manager for Bayer CropScience, who farms south of London near Sparta, Ontario, told the conference. Having toured the area, he estimates that 15 to 20 percent of land is unplanted, although he noted that some farmers still want to plant corn.
Many farmers now consider AgriCorp’s unseeded acreage coverage deadlines when making June planting decisions. June 15 is the reporting deadline for unseeded corn and June 30 is the deadline for soybeans. Unseeded acreage coverage claims are paid out at one-third of a customer’s average farm yield, which includes a six-acre deductible and a $1 per acre insurance premium, both of which are payable at the time of claim.
Peter Johnson, an agronomist with Real Agriculture, said there are “unusual pockets” of unseeded land stretching from London to Ancaster, near Hamilton, Ont. The area seems to be getting so much rain that some dairy farmers in the region aren’t planting corn.
Further south in Essex, Dale Cowan, agronomy strategy manager for AGRIS Cooperative, reports that most farmers have switched to soybeans. Overall, there is a lot of unplanted acreage: “Probably 30 per cent of the county is still unplanted, maybe a bit more in some areas.”
Provincewide, it’s hard to predict how much corn acreage will be lost because of planting problems. Bob Thirlwall, an agricultural solutions adviser for Bayer Crop Science in Glencoe, Ont., estimates Ontario’s corn loss is less than 10 percent of planned acreage. But for many growers, the story is different. “Unfortunately, in the southwest, where they’re having trouble planting, it’s a big percentage loss,” he said.
As Thirlwall drives the back roads of Middlesex County, he notices a lot of land that hasn’t been sown. “You see the fields that have been sown. That’s what stands out.”
For growers who have switched to soybeans, Thirlwall recommends sticking with the varieties they had originally planned and adjusting management to compensate for the delayed planting.
“Typically, once you get past June 10 or mid-June, you start increasing your soybean planting rate by 10 to 15 percent,” Thirlwall noted. “Soybeans don’t tend to grow as tall, so you want to plant more shoots, get more internodes, get more flowers and better pod production.”
