Counties of: Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola, Plymouth, Sioux
Harvest progress was slow over the past 10 days. We had heavy rainfall in early October, and weather since
then has been mostly cloudy and humid with occasional light rain or fog. This has stopped the crop dry down
process. Field conditions on most farms have dried enough to allow for harvest, but not without leaving some
tracks and compaction. Wet farms are still probably too wet to drive equipment on.
Soybean harvest has been very limited lately. The beans added too much moisture to harvest. On many farms,
beans went from 13% or 14% moisture back up to 20% moisture in a few days. We just haven’t had good drying
weather to take the moisture back down. This is getting frustrating to farmers, so many of them switched to
harvesting corn for now. The weather outlook is promising for bean harvest this weekend, but more wetness
coming next week. Soybean yields are outstanding. Many fields are yielding around 70 bushels per acre and
some higher.
Corn harvest is moving along but not full speed yet, as some farmers wait on beans to dry. The corn seems to
have also picked up about 2 points of moisture in the past week or so. A lot of corn is between 17% and 20%
moisture now. Good drying weather would be nice, but the corn will get harvested at that moister level if needed.
So far most corn is standing fairly well, but that is always a concern. Yields are running better than expected
generally, but also highly variable. Most good farms are averaging 200 bushels per acre or even better.
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
Real Estate Licensed in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota.
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