IARN — Farmers have made significant progress on the soybean harvest over the last two weeks as nearly one-third of the US crop was harvested during that span.
USDA’s weekly crop progress report on Monday showed both soybeans and corn came along nicely as growers have taken advantage of ideal weather conditions. USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey provides an update on the soybean harvest information released Monday.
“85 percent of US soybeans were dropping leaves on October 4th,” Rippey said. “That’s three percentage points ahead of the five-year average and 18 percentage points ahead of where we were at last year at this time when the crop was just 67 percent dropping leaves. We do see the overall harvest now reaching 38 percent by October 4th. That’s well ahead of the five-year average of 28 percent, and more than triple last year’s pace. Just 12 percent of the US soybeans had been harvested on October 4th of 2019.”
Rippey says the corn harvest reached the one-quarter mark as relatively dry weather across the central US kept the combines rolling.
“That 25 percent figure is one point ahead of the five-year average, but significantly ahead of last year’s 14 percent,” Rippey said. “We saw harvest progress doubling in seven Midwestern states. Just to mention a couple of them, we saw Illinois with harvest progress during the week ending October 4th advancing from 13 to 26 percent, Iowa going from 12 to 25 percent just during the week, and South Dakota double from 10 to 20 percent.”
Good/excellent conditions for corn were reported at 62 percent, a 1 percent improvement from the previous week. Soybeans came in at 64 percent good/excellent, unchanged from the previous week.
