Scotland Farmer's Early Planted Soybeans 'Look Fantastic'

Jeff Kloucek finished planting in early May. The Scotland, South Dakota farmer completed the first phase of the 2025 season with a few minor rain delays, having much of his soybean crop planted from mid-to-late April. Those earliest-planted soybeans, in Kloucek’s words, “look fantastic.”

“Everything that I’ve seen so far, the earlier-planted acres look way better than stuff that’s gotten planted from that May 2^nd through the 10^th,” said Kloucek. “Those fields are struggling a little bit just with the weather we’ve had.”

According to Kloucek, that weather turned hot and windy, but earlier-planted soybeans were already off to a good start, seeing the benefit of some well-timed showers.

“It turned out really well,” he said, referring to the beans planted earlier. “We caught some nice rains shortly after a lot of that April stuff got put in the ground to get the moisture to the seed if there was some planted in some dry pockets and get herbicides activated. So those stands came up really nice.”

Kloucek, a member of the South Dakota Soybean Association board, keeps his fingers crossed for more rain coming as needed through the season, but his confidence level for a good crop is bolstered by modern seed technology.

“These hybrids and varieties anymore, they’re pretty impressive as far as what they can take that gets thrown at them and still produce,” said Kloucek, “so as of right now, I’m still optimistic that if we can catch some timely rains, we’re going to be set up pretty good for a good year.”

As a crop consultant, input costs are often part of Kloucek’s conversations with clients. His advice to those clients is to be prudent in their decisions regarding inputs.

“How can we be more efficient with our money and not sacrifice yield or sacrifice our fertility in the soil going forward. So, we’ve tried a lot of different things here so far this spring. Now we’re going to see how the yields turn out and then just as importantly, what do our soil samples look like this fall versus last fall on those decisions we’ve made.”

Jeff Kloucek is featured on an edition of the Soybean Pod, during which he reveals a little-known talent of his passed down from three generations ago. Find The Soybean Pod wherever you get your podcasts, brought to you by South Dakota soybean growers and their checkoff.