The latest U.S.D.A. crop report out Monday showed south-central Iowa had 12 % of its corn remaining to be harvested by the end of last week.
Iowa State University field agronomist, Clarabell Probasco, says that seems a little high. “I haven’t seen very many fields left yet, they’re pretty few and far between, so I guess in my mind that number would be a little higher as being closer to complete.” she says. The report shows it’s the only region in the state with more than four percent of the corn left to harvest.
Probasco says some rare wet weather may’ve impacted the harvest. “My speculation on the situation might be that we did have a few wet days this spring and there are some instances I know that growers had to go in and do some replant and maybe put in some later maturing hybrids,” Probasco says, “and maybe those hybrids are just now getting ready to the point where they’re good enough on moisture content to come out of the field.”
The southern counties often warm up earlier and get a jump on planting. “Sometimes we’re a couple of days ahead. Sometimes it feels like we’re about a week ahead of some other areas of the state as far as getting in the field and just being a little bit warmer with soil temps and a little bit more ready to go,” she says. “And this year was no exception. I mean, we had a good start to the spring but yeah, like I said, there was a couple rain days that maybe pushing people out or got some areas that were flooded out and they wanted to go in and replant with a later hybrid.”
She says rain was not as plentiful after the early days, but the yields seemed to be okay. “Pretty good for the weather that we were handed. I know a lot of people were pleasantly surprised with the way things turned out which is because most if not a vast majority of the area was in that D-3 drought zone and we still are, so we lost a lot of moisture throughout the growing season,” Probasco says.
She says the area could use some more moisture to recharge the soil. “There’s a lot that’s in that short, to very short range so we’re really needing some good rain events this fall and then some good snowfall and maybe rain events as well this winter going into spring to really build that level back up and be ready to sustain another good crop next year,” she says. The statewide corn harvest is on the same pace as last year, and ten days ahead of the five-year average.