Counties of: Buena Vista, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola, Plymouth, Sioux
Our weather pattern has finally improved! Going from frequent rainfall and clouds earlier this month to mostly sunshine over the past 10 days. Saturated field conditions are improving daily, but some farms still have wet spots that aren’t suitable for harvest. The two week forecast shows a wetter pattern developing once again, but so
far the rain amounts look to be light.
Soybean harvest started a month ago in late September, it stalled out in early October from all the rain, and now it’s finally going full speed. Soybeans are very mature at this point, and need to come out soon to avoid increased harvest loss. By the end of theweek most all the soybeans should be harvested (if the dry weather holds). We are finding a lot of variability in yield performance. Drainage is the biggest factor with well drained farms yielding the best, and disease may be the second biggest factor this year. We are seeing widespread pod and stem blight issues due to the wet season.
Even fields that had seed treatments and were sprayed with fungicides had issues.Despite the problems, the soybean crop is better than average for this region.
Corn harvest started in early October for some. Many farmers started taking out corn when the beans were too wet. The combination of early maturing corn and wet fall weather has reduced the stalk quality and led to some corn going down. These fields should be harvested as soon as possible. As soon as soybean harvest is finished, the remaining corn should go quickly. Corn yields are also variable, but generally above average and in some cases setting new records on specific farms.
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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