What’s The Damage?

Jun 02, 2016

By United Soybean Board

Five things to consider when deciding whether to replant

It’s understandable for farmers to make snap judgments to replant a soybean crop after it’s been injured by weather events, herbicide drift or other causes. But immediately after those occurrences is typically a bad time to assess the situation because crop injury can look worse than it really is. Instead, allow at least three days to see whether your plants show signs of new growth.

After that, your decision should be based on whether your profitability prospects are greater from the existing stand or replanting. Here are five additional considerations to help make your replanting decision easier:

1. Crop insurance: If your crop is insured, it is important to consult with the insurance provider immediately.

2. Timing and plant spacing: If it is late May or June and you have four plants per row foot in 30-inch rows or one plant per row foot in drilled beans, there is probably no benefit to replanting. If you do decide to replant, use the same varieties you originally planted and modify other factors that are related to the cause of the problem. If you can’t find the same variety, find one with the same maturity. This will allow you to harvest at the same time.

3. Stand count and assessment: A stand count is essential if your field sustained random and substantial plant loss. If young stands contain large areas of damaged plants, replanting only those areas might be an easy choice.

4. Cause of damage: The severity of the damage to a soybean plant can vary widely based on the cause. For example, an early-season hail storm or frost will more easily destroy young soybean plants compared with corn. That’s because the growing point of corn remains in the soil until roughly the V6 stage while a soybean plant’s growing point is above ground at emergence. On the other hand, for damage caused by herbicide drift, soybean plants in even the very early vegetative stages have the ability to compensate for even severe damage. Plants in the early flowering stages can often compensate enough to recover sufficiently that there is no impact on yield.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.