While our friends in southeastern Wisconsin deal with that flooding, Michael Thompson is facing a different kind of challenge in Almena, Kan. The Conservation Ag Operator Fellow had his fingers crossed for some timely rains when we last visited him in late May.        

“It’s been pretty dry since we planted. We had a lot of windy days. There have been 20-40 mph winds sustained since we planted. It’s drying out quite a bit, so hopefully the roots are going down and getting into moisture. We’re going to need some rains because it’s pretty dry for the year. We usually get a lot of rains in this May-June time period, and so far in May we haven’t gotten them. We hope that late May and early June are pretty wet.”

“When we pull the residue back, the top is pretty dry as you can see. But you get down 2-3 inches where the corn is planted and it’s still wet enough where you get some moisture. It’s wet enough that we should keep going. That’s some of the benefits of having some cover but eventually the wind seems to dry everything out, it doesn’t seem to matter how much cover you have.”

“We still have a shot but were going to have to have timely rains throughout the growing season to have much because we only have a couple feet of profile moisture below. Our soil moisture profile was very lacking coming into this crop.” 

Looking forward to seeing how everything turns out during Thompson’s presentation at the 2026 No-Till Conference, Jan. 6 in St. Louis.

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.