Good Harvest Weather

By Paul Kassel

Our great fall weather continues for us in northwest and north central Iowa. We have had about two weeks of really good harvest weather.

I would say that most of the soybean harvest is complete. The soybean harvest started out really slow in early October. There were some farmers that had to quit harvesting soybeans because of excessive grain moisture. However, that changed in mid-October – as soybean grain moisture got down to the 10-11% moisture area.

Soybean yields are in the mid -50s for lots of people. Of course there are yields that far exceed that – but usually those are fields that may have been continuous corn for a few years. Often you do not get that complete story when you hear those really high soybean yields.

There have also been some fields in low to mid 40-bushel/acre area. Those yields have been in areas that received some of the 15+-inch rainfall in June. Some of those fields did not recover very well from that excessive rain in June and some of those same areas had some dry weather later in the season.

Corn harvest is about half complete in much of my area. Corn grain moisture is in the upper teens. There is some discussion in the country that farmers may delay harvest – to a certain degree – to take advantage of some of the field drying that is occurring.