Rain Halts Harvest In NW Iowa

By Paul Kassel
ISU Extension

Harvest has begun in earnest in Northwest Iowa. We are however at a stand still right now as roughly an inch of rain has halted field operations.

We had real good harvest conditions the first two weeks of October. I would say that most of the soybean crop that was planted in May is harvested. I am hearing that the May planted soybean crop yielded pretty well – with a lot of yields in the mid to upper 50 bu/a range.

Farmers just started harvest on the June planted soybean crop last weekend. A large part of my area did not plant many soybeans until the June 20 to July 1 time frame. However, that crop looks pretty good and yields have been in the mid 40’s – if you had rain in August. The June planted soybean crop that was in areas that were dry in August are seeing – as expected – lower yields. I would say that about 15% of the June planted soybean crop is harvested.

There is some corn harvest as well. Grain moisture content has been in the upper teens to low 20s. We will see a lot of corn harvest activity once things dry up from this rain event.

Clarke McGrath had an article on expected corn dry down in a recent crop blog article. This caught my attention as I had questions on the dry down of the corn that was replanted in June in my area. Some reports of the corn replanted in June is that it is ¾ milk line or a week from black layer maturity. In other words it is about 35% grain moisture. And since it was replanted, it is often interspersed through out a field. So it makes harvest and grain drying decisions very difficult.