When questions arise regarding what to charge or pay for custom work done on Iowa farms, many look to the ISU Custom Rate Survey for guidance. However, the range in age of equipment, size, and custom services being provided across the state is vast. The survey encompasses a range of custom operators, from producers who provide a small amount of custom work as it fits their labor and machinery capacity to full-time custom operators who do nothing but custom work for others.

Palmer amaranth was first identified in Iowa in Harrison County in 2013, shortly afterwards isolated infestations were found in Fremont and Page Counties. In subsequent years I visited these sites and made casual assessments as to whether the population was increasing or decreasing and looked for evidence it was spreading outside of the initial areas. My last tour was in 2021, and I thought I had moved on to other things.

The Hodgson lab regularly scouts for field crop insect pests during the summer, which includes monitoring the distribution of new pests. Sometimes this effort is part of a regional grant, but occasionally it is for our own interest. This article shares the updated distribution maps for soybean gall midge and soybean tentiform leafminer in Iowa with detections from the 2026 growing season.