Counties of: Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola, Plymouth, Sioux
Harvest started on a few farms with early maturity crops or livestock feed needs. It looks like many more farms will be ready next week. The weather outlook is mostly warm and dry, so harvest should progress quickly. Most of this area had well over a half inch of rain last week (some up to about 1.5 inches). It will be important to get normal rainfall or more this fall to start rebuilding soil moisture for next season.
Corn is mature but most is still wet. We look for more variability in grain moisture and yield this season than usual (variable within the same field). Drought stress ended the growing season prematurely with heat and lack of rainfall at the expense of kernel depth and test weight. Fields or areas within fields with heavier soils held moisture longer and will have higher yields and wetter corn than well drained areas. We expect yields to have a wide range and end up a little below average overall. It looked like a lot of corn would be harvested before beans this year, but the rainfall and cooler temperatures last week delayed corn progress. Now, it looks like most beans will be harvested before corn
Soybeans are turning color quickly. Most fields today are yellow & brown. Many of the early maturity beans will be harvested over the next 10 days. Full season beans were still green last week, so they may have benefited from the rain. It will be interesting to see if the late beans have an edge over early beans this year because of it. We expect most farms to yield below average this year. Areas with more rain and good
heavy soil will do the best.
The grain markets continue a pre-harvest uptrend. This is not typically a time when grain markets rally, but this is not a normal year. USDA cut production estimates last week in the Sep WASDE Report on corn and soybeans, China continues to buy US corn and beans at an impressive rate, and Argentina & Brazil are dry. Both countries need rain to promote early planting of soybeans.
Please click on the links on the right to view the past pdf’s of our Northwest Crop Conditions reports.
1705 N Lake Ave
Storm Lake, IA 50588
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