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Iowa farmers ---using….. five….. sunny and dry work days during the past week----now have planted …ninety-three-percent…. of Iowa’s corn acreage.
That’s nearly three-weeks behind…. the five-year average progress….. at this stage of the growing season.
This (Monday) afternoon……Mike Stewart….farming near Mount Vernon…. was among those scrambling to get seeds in the ground….
“I’m on my last day, hopefully, planting beans. Everything else is in the ground. Finished corn Thursday evening and started beans on Friday. Got about sixty…seventy acres here to finish.”
The U-S Department of Agriculture’s Monday afternoon crop update says Iowa soybean growers have planted ….. seventy-percent ….of the expected soybean acres--------seventeen days later than average soybean planting progress during the past five years.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is facing an unexpected challenge in meeting the needs of the many people affected by this spring's widespread flooding and violent storms: a strong economy. In no place is that clearer than Nebraska and Iowa, which were ravaged by floods and have some of the nation's lowest unemployment rates.
Tasked with responding to natural disasters that seem ever more frequent and destructive, the agency finds itself further challenged by the robust job market and an inability to match what the private sector can offer, in many cases.
FEMA officials are turning for help to retirees, recent college graduates and those who lost their jobs to the disasters, though they're finding few available workers in many of the rural communities that are in some of the hardest-hit areas.
