Northwest Iowa Crop Conditions

Harvest is already wrapping up in this area, making this the earliest harvest completion in several years. We finally had a fairly widespread rain early this week which was nice to see. High winds last week combined with very dry conditions to make dangerous fire potential. There were several large combine / crop fires around the area. Many farmers chose to shut down during the high wind days or bring a disk to the field just in case. About 40% of Iowa is currently in a severe drought and the rest of the state is in at least a moderate drought.

Soybean harvest is basically all complete. Yields were highly variable depending on the soil and rainfall, but overall I think they were a little better than expected considering the dry August. Yields between 50 to 60 bushels per acre would catch most farms. It wasn’t uncommon to have areas in a field reach up to 80 bushels per acre in the bottom ground
and 30 bushels per acre on the hills.

Corn harvest is going quickly. Dry weather and dry corn makes it go fast and easy. There will be minimal drying costs this year. We were worried about corn going down because of how dry and stressed it is, but so far most corn has held up well. Corn yields were just as variable as beans. Overall, I have been somewhat disappointed in yields.Corn on corn is not good this year at all. Corn following soybean yields have ranged from 140 to 240 bushels per acre. On farm averages this year, anything near 200 is a good yield on high quality farmland.