Northwest Iowa — According to the latest Iowa Crop Progress and Condition Report issued by the USDA, since they started keeping records, Iowa farmers have never been this behind on harvesting soybeans. A big part of that is all the excess moisture we’ve received.
Ben Torrance, Agricultural Statistician for the USDA-National Agriculture Statistics Service, Upper Midwest Region Field Office, gives us the stats.
He says the other soybean stats, such as maturity and condition remain pretty good.
Excess moisture has made it tough for farmers to get anything done in the fields, according to Torrance. The average was less than one day available for fieldwork in the last week.
He says the corn harvest wasn’t doing too much better, with less than 20 percent harvested, but that’s closer to normal.
He says outdoor livestock producers haven’t had it much easier.
The weather part of the crop report says that northwest Iowa has been cooler and much wetter than normal. In fact, the coldest temperature recorded last week was in O’Brien County, with both Sheldon and Sanborn reporting a low of 24 degrees on Sunday, which is 12 degrees below normal. On the week, it says northwest Iowa was 6 to 10 degrees below normal. Parts of western Iowa were near normal to warmer than average.
