A weather pattern that hasn’t been at a premium all summer was a welcomed sight across the Raccoon Valley Radio area for farmers.

Landus Cooperative Field Agronomist Dan Bjorklund calls the recent precipitation over the past week a “million dollar” rainfall that will help finish out the corn crop and fill in soybean pods. He talks about what some of the corn plants were doing as a result of having little to no rainfall prior to this past week.

“What the plant was doing was that since there wasn’t any subsoil to get those nutrients into the plant to fill the ear, it just started remobilizing the lower part of the plant. In a sense, it was cannibalizing itself.”    

Bjorklund describes one main factor he believes has kept more corn from succumbing to the year long drought conditions in Greene County.

“What saved us this year is, I think, if I remember my statistics that we only had four or five days that even hit 90 (degrees) or above. So the cool temperatures just helped that plant to not be stressed as much. If we would’ve been hitting temperatures like they have in Texas over the last three or four weeks, we’d be looking at (a) big hit on yields. So the cool weather has really saved us.”  

According to the National Weather Service from August 6th-9th, Jefferson has had 2.49 inches of precipitation.