Fieldwork varies across the Northern Plains. “In the western part of North Dakota, conditions look alright. Moving east and north, there are some wet pockets of ground that is taking awhile to get into,” said Spencer Wagner, ag sales manager, N7 LLC. “There seems to be a lot of people getting in due to how wet things froze up last fall.” Fertilizer demand has been steady, but Wagner said it isn’t moving at the speed it was last year. In northwest Minnesota, the crop is slowly going in the ground. “The last week of April farmers got in on some old sugarbeet ground near near Stephen and Argyle. It’s drier. Lots of farmers have been planting sugarbeets and wheat,” said David McGlynn, field science representative, Bayer CropScience. “Farmers are also dealing with a fair amount of unharvested crops.” In southern Minnesota, farmers have made very good planting progress near Morris. “Corn planting is almost wrapped up and a good number of acres of soybeans are done, too,” said Bob Burner, manager, Donnelly Co-op. “It’s been one of the smoothest springs I’ve been through in 17 years.” Listen to Crop Watch.