| w1891 - 9/17/2023 15:18 And during your frozen time you average little precipitation. I am willing to bet your May 1-Sept 1 average precip isn’t that far off of his. We get 15-18” more than you in Oct 1-April 1 and I bet your APH’s are similar or better than ours. The uselessness of annual precipitation as a metric becomes even more pronounced in the Delta where they get twice as much as you but still need irrigation to get 200bu corn. Since no one can really hold much more than 12” in the top 5’ of soil and it take a lot of dry weather to completely dry soil out that deep, you like SD aren’t nearly as far behind as you think.
It takes really good ground to get APH's much above 200, 220 would be considered a really good APH in this area.
The difference in out of growing season rainfall is that you are used to starting every year with a full soil profile. I'm guessing pattern tile is the norm in your area, there is some pattern tile here but its not the norm, most guys tile out the draws not whole farms.
Our subsoil has never started the crop year full in the past 4 years and our crops have reflected that. There is no way that you get 15" of rain between growing seasons and start out with a dry soil profile, the top soil may be dry but not below the top couple inches.
The in-season rainfall is closer to the same as yours but Illinois still gets more on average. In general, crops in this area way in the NW corner of IA get hurt by being too dry far more often than being too wet. Go 50-100 miles east/southeast of here and that is not the case. They also get a fair amount more rain than we do and have soils that are more prone to staying water logged.
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Mkt. tlk followers better not read Crop Talk
