Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says the latest U.S.D.A. crop report shows good progress in the harvest.
“Last week we had five percent of the corn, seven percent of the beans out. Now we’re up to 13 percent of the corn — 32 percent of the soybeans,” Northey says.
Northey says he’s hearing good things about yields. “It’s gonna vary every place, but certainly in some areas of northwest and nonthcentral Iowa we’re seeing 60-bushel soybeans where sometimes those are normally 50-bushel soybeans. Certainly corn in a lot of places over 200 bushels (an acre) in place that don’t always get that,” according to Northey. “We are going to have other parts of Iowa that are not going to have their best crop, but in some of these areas, that’s the best crop they’ve harvested.”
The corn harvest is 10 days ahead of last year, but eight days behind average. The soybean harvest is one week ahead of last year, but one day behind average. He expects thing to move forward quite a bit this week. “If we get a good week this week and dodge some moisture in the middle of the week, we’ll be moving along real good,” Northey says.
He says the crop appears to be pretty dry, but there have been some concerns about the beans not being dry enough. “Stems are a little damp in some places, so it makes it a little hard to harvest. It takes a lot of power to get those damp stems through the combine, but with good yields, you’ll certainly take that,” Northey says.
Northey farms corn and beans near Spirit Lake. “My beans are just getting ready, there’s a lot of soybean harvest that’s been done up there. My corn is coming out very nice — at least the first quarter or so I’ve gotten out — has been about the best corn that I’ve ever had,” according to Northey. The big yield numbers are good, but a big yield could keep commodity prices down.
Northey says a lot of that also depends on the harvest numbers across the grain belt. He says he hasn’t heard about the yields in other areas of the midwest.
“For farmers you’ve got to have bushels first, but at the end of the day what you pay bills with is dollars,” he explains, “and dollars will come with these higher yields, but we certainly wish we had some prices that would bounce back a little bit. We don’t wish ill harvest on anybody else.” He says farmers will get the harvest complete and then take time to see what the yields across the country mean for their own crop.