An exceptionally wet summer has local farmer Dick Works ?cautiously? optimistic about potential harvests this fall. Farmers are not ready to turn the page on 2019, despite an array of obstacles.
Low-flying crop dusters have been a common sight in Allen County in recent days. The cause for concern is worms.
?There has been an outbreak of worms in the last three or four days. We noticed some in our soybeans,? Works said Thursday afternoon. ?Planes are lined up all week. We should have some at our place either today, or possibly Friday. But there is a chance of rain for Friday, so hopefully they hit ours today.?
Chuck Sutherland said Wednesday?s crop dusting was mainly focused on the Le Roy area, with the planes and helicopters to focus on the Iola and Humboldt areas the rest of the week.
?At this time of the year, that?s really the only way we can combat the pests,? Works said. ?We have had so much rain that the ground is still wet, there are puddles in the fields, it?s just too muddy out there. And besides that, all the crops are so far along at this point, you don?t want to damage them by getting out there.?
Aaron Huscer of Beachner Grain Inc. in Humboldt, confirmed worms are big problem.
?There are definitely some worms in the beans, they are setting up on the pods,? Huscer said. ?They are doing their best to knock them out.?
Brian Norton, a service representative for Syngenta, was on hand Wednesday at the Golden Harvest test plot site in Iola demonstrating new fungicides and pesticides.
Norton said that moths are past laying their eggs on milo.
?The corn earworm moth is the pest that they are spraying for. They would rather lay their eggs on the milo because it is easier to lay their eggs on the top of the head. The moth has an ability to evaluate the crop and know that a week from now when those eggs hatch, they are not going to have a food source. They know that the milo is too far along,? Norton said. ?They go to corn next because it is the next easiest to fly through. When the corn starts to get a little color to it and starts maturing, then they know their food source is running out again, they move to the soybeans. They don?t like to fly through the beans because it is all canopeyed together and hard to get into. The beans are what they will go to next.?
?As an example, last week I walked through my test plot of corn and moths were just rolling out of it. This week, none are there.?
Works said that other than the worms, crops are looking good.
?I am still cautiously optimistic. Our early corn, if it wasn?t ruined by the flood, looks really good. We did lose a lot of our early corn because it sat in water and rotted out. But the late corn is looking pretty good and the soybeans have really taken off in the last few weeks. I think it will be a pretty good harvest,? Works said.
