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Planting Still Slow In Parts Of North Iowa

Dean Borg/IPR
Clearing mud from a planter in North Iowa.

Today – June 1 -- is the date the U.S. Department of Agriculture begins computing federal prevented planting insurance payments to farmers who still have unplanted corn fields.

Most of those unplanted fields, intended for corn, are in North Iowa, in the Mason City-Forest City region.

“Every day, we’ve been rained out,” said Wayne Johnson, who farms in the area. 

He’s completed corn planting, and is still planting soybeans, steering through muddy fields and planting where he can.

“I have ankle high corn also, so from one side of my farm things look really nice, to the other side of my farm, I’m still planting,” he said.

Despite North Iowa’s weather frustrations USDA rates 80 percent of Iowa’s newly-emerging corn crop in good to excellent condition.