Word: rains
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Those most likely to benefit from the rain live on the fringes of the storm's heaviest bands, in places like Iowa City, Iowa, in the south-central corner of one of the nation's top soybean-producing states. Drive 100 or so miles north, you might run into floodwater. Drive the same distance to the south, farmers are still praying for rain...
Much of the Midwest is reeling from days of persistent rain and flooding. But there's at least one silver lining - or, perhaps, a golden one: For many on the storm's fringes, even a slight dose of rain is offering relief from the summer's drought...
...most critical time for crops to receive moisture. Without it, experts say the seeds abort or don't grow to their potential size. Walt Fehr, a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University in Ames, says, "The majority of soybean crops in Iowa will benefit significantly from this rain...
...through the weekend. Driving back from meetings in Missouri earlier this week, Sladek recalls looking out at corn and soybean fields that "were in horrible condition" because of the drought. "You come up to our area," he says, "and we're having one of the best crops ever. The rain definitely helped. But," he adds with a reference to news of the rain's onslaught, "it's a year of real extremes...
Meanwhile, Dan Luna, a meteorologist and hydrologist in the National Weather Service's Chanhassen, Minn., office, says up to 7 inches of rain may fall in parts of the region this weekend. That puts some farmers in a tenuous position. First, Keith Sexton feared the summer drought would reduce his corn crops at his farm near Fort Dodge, Iowa, in the north-central part of the state. So far, the rains have been a blessing: He's expecting to yield about 165 bushels of corn per acre, and about 50 bushels of soybeans per acre - average to above-average...