Experts encouraging Iowa farmers to start planting now for tar spot

Iowa farmers are encouraged to formulate a 2023 management plan that includes tar spot mitigation efforts, as the disease has continued to spread westward across the Corn Belt and affect cornfields from the eastern Great Lakes to western Iowa.

Farmers across Iowa found the disease again during the 2022 growing season, and although its effects were deemed minimal this past year statewide, experts say tar spot is here to stay and can cause significant damage to corn both early and late in the season.

“We had some good early season moisture that likely played a...