Farmers always have a busy schedule and planing for their crops is included. Shaun Sipma shows us how preparing for the new planting season can be an active process....
March is now just right around the corner and that means we're just weeks away until farmers head back into their fields for another planting season.
Farmers are already busy doing things like getting rectified for their chemical application, handling and storage.
(Mike Rose, Ward County NDSU Extension Agent) "Well farmers and ranchers that use pesticides have to certified as a private applicator. In other words if they spray a pesticide on their farm to protect their crop they need to be certified."
Elsewhere shops are bustling with activity getting these field workhorses ready to dig back into the spring soil.
(Tige Engelhard, Gooseneck Implement) "For us it starts a month or two before we actually hit the field. It's getting everything going getting the preparations."
Everything from the four-wheel drives, air seeders to sprayers. Farmers will need all their equipment in tip top shape when they finally turn their tires.
(Tige Engelhard, Gooseneck Implement) "You know like on Air Drills, people are going through the openers, and seed hoses and make sure all the metering is working properly. And then the tractors of course, it's overhauls and tune-ups and people doing regular service work."
(Shaun Sipma, KX News) "Most everyone in the Ag Industry is winding up heading into spring planting but surprisingly one sector has been relatively quiet, the seed sales, and that's something very unusual for this time of the year."
(Jeff Heil, SunPrairie Grain) "Typically this time of year we'd see 75%-85% of the acreage committed to some kind of commodity but with these wild and crazy markets ever since last November there really hasn't been any commitment towards anything."
Heil says their seed crews are advising producers to stay with their usual rotations and grow what they grow best
He says the longer farmers wait, the more likely they are to miss out on seed varieties.
(Jeff Heil, SunPrairie Grain) "I think our supplies are going to be very, very limited to nothing come April first or any later than April first."
He says with commodity prices where they're at, this would be the wrong year for a farmer miss out on what he or she wanted to grow.
