While much of Missouri moved past the halfway point of corn planting, sections of East Central Missouri are still trying to get planters into the field.

According to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report, Missouri has 58% of its corn acres planted, 51 percentage points ahead of last year. Areas around Kansas City and Columbia are well over 75% planted. However, in areas to the east around Warrenton and Hawk Point just 24% of the corn acres are planted.

SCURRYING TO PLANT: Farmers on the eastern side of Missouri are racing to plant corn before wet weather moves into the area starting tomorrow.

Channel Seedsman and Missouri Rualist Field Finds columnist Kyle Allen, says areas along the eastern side remain wet. He notes that rains last week ranged from 1 3/4 to 2 inches in some locations. "We have some guys who just started putting on anhydrous last week," Allen says.

This area of the state experienced weather delays last planting season. In some cases, farmers were simply unable to plant corn or soybeans. In 2015, Missouri was the No. 1 state in prevented planting acres with more than 500,000 acres of corn and more than 1 million acres of soybeans.

Some farmers chose to plant those acres to cover crops. Allen noted that farmers are trying to decide whether to spray the cereal rye or just plant into it. "The ground under it is still wet."

Allen says fall fieldwork was the key to planting corn acres early this spring. "If they did not fall spray or cultivate, the fields are absolutely wet."

However, the dry weather at the end of last week and over the weekend had farmers running field equipment. Allen says just in the last three days he has put in 11 corn plots. "It is really picking up," he notes. "There are guys who will be running well into the early morning hours tonight trying to get corn in the ground before the rains."

Farmers across Missouri are expecting to see rain showers through Wednesday.