Planting soybeans with ISA President Jeff Jorgenson

by | May 12, 2021 | 5 Ag Stories, News

Family farmer Jeff Jorgenson has been busy planting soybeans near Sidney this week, along with his duties serving as president of the Iowa Soybean Association.

On Wednesday morning, Jorgenson was working fields about a mile northeast of Sidney and had IARN out for a visit. He says the 2021 spring planting season has been rapid just like farmers experienced last year.

?There?s some similarities to last year,? said Jorgenson. ?We were dry in 2020 and 2021 has obviously been dry until we had a short rain four or five days ago. The difference this year is it?s cooler. There?s no question the cooler temperatures have changed things. A little slower plant emergence on the corn side. Weed pressure is taking a little longer to die off from applications of herbicide. It?s all going to happen hopefully the right way. We just need to get a little more heat units and it should be coming.?

With grain prices high, Jorgenson says farmers are excited for 2021 production opportunities.

?We have come off of three years that were pretty rough from 2018, 2019 and 2020 on pricing,? said Jorgenson. ?It should be a good year for agriculture and we really need it in agriculture. This probably has the opportunity to get people back whole, but we still have to raise a crop. We have five months yet to go before we really know where we are at and what we are going to raise.?

Jorgenson says this is his 11th and final year on the board of the Iowa Soybean Association. He recently started a three-year term with the American Soybean Association where he?ll have more of a national focus.

?Priorities for Iowa Soybean Association this year at the state level, you know we were really heavy and had a big focus on the biofuels bill,? said Jorgenson. ?There?s some things that are probably going to happen with that, not exactly what we wanted as the association, but we are moving in the right direction.?

?Nationally,? he continued, ?there?s a lot of things that are going to be happening with USDA with understanding the 30×30 and what carbon credits are going to be. There?s a lot of factors in that which are really going to impact agriculture and we want to make sure farmers are on the right side of things knowing where they are going to be and hopefully doing better things on our bottom line.?

To stay up to date on the work from the Iowa Soybean Association, visit iasoybeans.com. A Facebook Live video interview with Jeff Jorgenson can be viewed below.