FridaySeptember 03, 2010
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NEWS
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009 A hard harvest By Chuck Sterling Editor Wright County farmers are harvesting pretty good soybean and corn crops, according to an agriculture official, but they've had a struggle getting them in the bin. The crops are turning out to be average and above, said Kevin Bergquist, director of the federal Farm Service Agency office in Buffalo, after a wet October delayed the harvest by weeks and made it a lot more difficult. "It's been a struggle but we are making good progress now," Bergquist said late last week as farmers worked long hours during a stretch of warm, dry weather to try to make up for lost time. The story of this year's harvest, he said, "is the difficulty, the struggle, they're having getting the crop out of the fields because of the wet conditions ... and mud." Rain and snow in October made it one of the wettest on record. "With the wet weather it's just taken a large amount of work and it's been a mess out there," Bergquist said. "It's hard on men and it's hard on equipment." Most farmers were out harvesting during the dry spell the first two weeks of November - "a real godsend" - he said, but the fields remained wet and made it difficult. "I would say it's going to be an issue right up to freeze up." Besides pushing the harvest back two or three weeks for both crops, the wet weather has forced some farmers to spend extra time and money drying the soybeans and corn with propane heaters after harvesting it. "It's exceedingly rare to have to dry soybeans," Bergquist said, estimating that hadn't been done here in 15 or 20 years. Near Annandale, Albion Township farmer Bob Neumann said the wetness delayed his 300-acre soybean harvest until Nov. 5, more than a month after his normal end-of-September start. "We didn't get stuck ... but we had to work around the real low spots," he said, and that made it more difficult. But what slowed up the harvest more than the mud was the lack of sunshine and dry weather in October that prevented the crops from drying down, Neumann said. Even if farmers had been able to get into the fields during the October wet spell, the crops would have been too wet to harvest. "When it dried out the soybean harvest went quite well," Neumann said, and was completed in five long days and nights. At nearly 50 bushels per acre it was one of his better soybean crops for yield. He didn't have to dry his soybeans, but some of his neighbors did. Neumann was still working on his 400-acre corn crop and figured it would take at least until Thanksgiving and likely the end of the month to finish. It was yielding 160 to 170 bushels per acre, and he was drying the high-moisture corn with propane heaters. Across the county, the 85,000-acre soybean harvest was about 90 percent complete late last week, Bergquist estimated, and should wrap up this week. Normally it would have been finished by the end of October. The soybean crop is "average to above average," he said. Yields, with some reports of 50 to 60 bushels per acre, will be about average in the lower 40s for the county with very good quality. "I think it was a good crop." Farmers were just getting into the corn harvest, and up to 75 percent of the crop, also totaling about 85,000 acres, was still in the field, Bergquist said. It will likely be the second week of December before it's finished compared to the week before Thanksgiving in a normal year. "I'd say we still have an above average crop out there," he said, even with quality concerns over high moisture, light test weights and mold that varied from farmer to farmer. With many reports of 150-bushel-per-acre corn and some as high as 200, he expected the yield to be above the 140-bushel average. This year's crops compare favorably with last year's, which were average in most of the county while the Annandale area was hurt by drought, Bergquist said. "I think the crop is definitely better than last year countywide." | ||||
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