In August, my office phone lights up with calls from farmland owners wanting to know about the direction of cash rent values for farms here in east-central Illinois. This is never easy to answer because no one can accurately forecast the future. Currently, we are looking for average to above yields...

This is the third year in a row that I have seen tall waterhemp, over 6" tall, sprayed with a post-emergent herbicide combination containing dicamba. Last year, I noticed a few fields where it seemed that tall waterhemp had survived a late application of dicamba and appeared to have small seed...

If you have been watching cornfields in Central Illinois, you may have noticed that the young corn plants have changed colors over the past couple of weeks. In late April, the small corn plants were green in color and two weeks later these same plants are pale yellow-green. On April 26, the 4-inch...