Every spring, farmers across the Midwest take to the fields to plant their crops. Here, corn and soybeans will reign supreme over tens of millions of acres, as soon as conditions are right to plant. Not too wet, not too dry — just right.
But the U.S. had an exceptionally wet winter this year. And it kept raining in the spring. April turned to May, and it kept raining. May turned to June, and, well, you get the picture. The past 12 months in the U.S. have been the wettest on record.
Now, rivers are overflowing, and multiple states are dealing with record-breaking floods. But even away from waterways, soils are so saturated that there’s standing water in many Midwestern farm fields. If things don’t dry out soon, some farmers may miss their planting window entirely and will have to wait until next year to plant a crop.
Emerson Nafziger is a professor emeritus of crop sciences at the University of Illinois. He says this year’s rain — and the forced delay in planting — is out of the ordinary. “I’ve been here almost 40 years,” he says, “I don’t know if we’ve ever reached the end of May with less than half of our corn planted.”
