Illinois is experiencing the wettest June in years. To find out how that’s impacting this year’s crops, environment reporter Jess Savage talked with Giovani Preza Fontes. He’s the food crop agronomist for Illinois and an assistant professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jess Savage: Okay, in Illinois we've been having kind of crazy weather the last couple of weeks. Can you walk us through what that has been like for the crops this season?
Giovani Preza Fontes: It's a totally different June than we've seen in the past three or four seasons. Before, we had a relatively dry June, and that comes with the benefits of the lack of standing water in the fields. That means that the crops were able to have a good root development, they were able to explore the soils and establish. Every time that the soil gets saturated, it affects growth development because the plants lack of oxygen for respiration. That's slowed down crop growth and development.
JS: Okay, that's really helpful to understand. You mentioned in your early-season crop progress and conditions report that a lot of the rain that's been coming to Illinois are acute thunderstorms rather than widespread rain. Can you explain, is that normal for this time of year?
GPF: Yeah, I think what we've seen is that the pop-up showers that people like to refer to are becoming more normal. That means that not every field, and not every part of the field get rainfall. But, if you look at the growing season again, this is the time where we're early in the growth stage. I would rather have a little bit of dry weather, so the crops can actually thrive in terms of root development and having a good root system.
JS: Okay, so we're talking about kind of a wetter start to the season, and I know in previous years, especially getting on into the summer, it starts getting really dry in Illinois. Are you expecting that this year?
GPF: As long as we get enough, or average, rainfall in July and August, I think we should be fine. What we've seen in the past is a relatively dry June, but then we got timely rainfall by the time the corn was pollinated and soybeans started to bloom. I think if we get a similar scenario this year, we should be moving to good conditions for the second half of the growing season.
JS: I feel like anytime I talk about weather and crops with either researchers or farmers, there's an element of, you just really can't control what the weather is going to do. Is that stressful or hopeful, or something else?
GPF: That's an interesting take. I mean, there's no way that we can predict the weather, so one of the things that we try to do is kind of look back from past season and see what happened and lessons that we can use to help us be more prepared for the next growing season. One thing is for sure – we know it's that not every growing season is going to be the same. But, I think a lot of farmers already have in mind, and they have experiences of the weather they have in their fields, and when it comes to management, everything what we're trying to do is trying to manage the crop for the best possible environment. We know on average what we should expect, and I think that's the starting point for managing corn and soybean in this state.
JS: Okay. Well, thank you so much for speaking with me. And this is great.
GPF: Yeah, no thanks. Anytime.
