With Nearly 200,000 Acres, Soybeans are Again Top Planted Crop in Norman County`

Ada, MN — The interest in planting soybeans rose again this year in Norman County, adding an additional 20,000 acres over last year. The results from this 2021 final acreage reports were shared last week during the Kaleidoscope Program by Norman County FSA Director Randy Tufton. 195,000 acres of soybeans were planted this spring, which is up more than 10% from 2020 when 175,000 acres were planted, but is still shy of the more than 200,000 acres planted in 2017. The next biggest crops planted this year include corn (121,000), wheat (95,000), and sugar beets (42,000). The biggest change in acreage this year comes from the corn crop, which saw more than a third of the crop replaced by prevent plant in 2020.

While the big four of soybeans, corn, wheat, and sugar beets make up more than 90% of tillable land in Norman County, Tufton says there a dozens of other crops planted each year such as potatos, rye, hemp, wildflowers, and a number of others.

The one thing that wasn’t planted this year was prevent plant acres, which is following a year where 53,000 acres of prevent plant cover crops were registered. However, Tufton notes that growers should be considering planting a cover crop this fall considering how dry the soil may be and how early the crops are being taken off.

The approximately 500,000 tillable acres are managed by a registered 1,585 farms in the county, which makes for an average farm size of 315 acres. For comparison’s sake, Henneppin County, the state’s most populous county, has only 542 registered farms amongst 23,000 planted acres.

Listen to the full interview with Randy Tufton from the KRJB Kaleidoscope Program below: