Corn flattened by the derecho. (Iowa Ag Department photo)
The recovery of crops damaged by the derecho in August has been a mixed bag as the harvest nears its end.
An estimated 3.6 million acres of corn in Iowa got slammed by winds up to 100 miles-an-hour. That left stalks almost flat to the ground and others remained standing with a pronounced tilt. At the Key Cooperative in Kelly, agronomist Ben Hollingshead says some farmers gave up on the damaged crops to focus on preparing fields for next year — but many did attempt to harvest what they could.
“Some of it they might only have got half of it picked up, some of it they did a little better–was it the hybrid, the technique, they kind of got what they got. There’s an infinite number of variables,” according to Hollingshead. He says there’s not any one factor that can be cited with helping a certain field come out better than another.
“Whether it regards a choice to do termination or whether it’s a particular hybrid was worse on the wind, I can generally find something to counter that immediately in some other area,” Hollingshead says. He says most damaged fields were covered by crop insurance, which farmers told him they were grateful to have.
(By Amy Mayer,| Iowa Public Radio)