IARN — Despite a slowdown due to a week of soggy and cold weather across much of the Northern Plains and Midwest, the corn and soybean harvest is still well ahead of average.
USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says the overall corn harvest number still looks good as 72 percent of the corn crop has been harvested. That’s far ahead of the five-year average of 56 percent and last year’s 38 percent.
“During the last week, only 12 percent of the corn was harvested,” Rippey said. “That compares to the weekly number of 13 percent for the five-year average. In other words, after four weeks of rapid progress, harvest slowed to near or below normal pace. If you look at the individual states, we saw at least 15 percent of the corn harvested before the weather turned bad. And then a handful of states – including Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota – were able to get a fair amount of field work done before all of the cold weather, snow, and rain hit.”
Rippey says the soybean harvest reached 83 percent nationally by October 25th, which is 10 percentage points ahead of the five-year average and much further than last year’s 57 percent.
“No single state was able to achieve 15 percent (soybean) harvest progress for the week,” Rippey said. “We did see six states picking up 10 percent or more of the harvest during the week – those being Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Wisconsin – able to work in advance of the bad weather to get some of the soybeans out. So, a big change for the Midwest with the colder snowier and rainier weather moving in.”
For Iowa, over three-quarters of the state’s corn for grain has been harvested, more than three weeks ahead of last year and two weeks ahead of average. Only six percent of Iowa’s soybean crop remains to be harvested, three weeks ahead of last year and just over two weeks ahead of average.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
