This week, I went east and surveyed the southern half of Vermilion County. Overall, the corn and soybean crop looked healthy, and soil conditions were near ideal to only mildly wet in most areas. However, there were some low-lying soybean fields showing pockets of stressed plants showing symptoms of root rot and a few instances where the plants have died. This has been a common observation of my past few reports in surrounding counties with differing levels of severity. In southern Vermilion County currently, crop loss appears to be lower than it is a bit further west and southwest. Most soybean fields I stopped at were at late R2 to early R3. Japanese beetles are easy to find in most fields, but defoliation levels were still well below threshold in fields I stopped at. Most corn was R1-R2, and as noted in Nick Seiter’s post, a few of the fields surveyed had corn leaf aphid colonies present.