“Work around limited rain delays” best describes grower activity in the west-central Illinois area.

Rainfall over the Easter weekend varied from a tenth to 3 inches across the region. By midweek, many of our drier areas were able to initiate fieldwork and rack up some impressive planting progress.

The period during and immediately following that rainfall resulted in lower temperatures, but conditions warmed by midweek, with the week ahead also looking warm.

Where fieldwork was delayed past midweek, efforts appeared largely focused on the spring battle to eliminate purple and green from the field. Disks, field cultivators and sprayers dotted the landscape.

Growers in drier regions made significant progress on soybean and corn planting over the past week, though activity was not limited to this period alone. Late March soybean planting appears to have increased in 2026, resulting in my west-central Illinois colleague, Andrew Malcomson, Beck’s agronomist, observing emerged, early-planted soybeans late in the week. An increase in stale seedbed preparation also appears to be at play, making it difficult to initially detect planted fields during windshield surveys.

The evening of April 9 brought additional rainfall that initially appeared poised to curtail most fieldwork heading into the weekend. However, growers were soon back at it, and an initial forecast for additional rainfall just ahead of Tax Day increasingly appears less likely to materialize.