Northwest Iowa Crop Conditions

Weather across the Midwest has turned very cold this week. We received light snow last night; heaver snowfall was north of us in Minnesota. Our 10 day forecast doesn’t get above freezing. The moist soil will get hard fast shutting down fall tillage, NH3 fertilizer, soil sampling, tilling, or any other dirt work projects. We normally have at least another 2 weeks before the ground freezes.

Fortunately harvest is very close to completion. Corn harvest was a little later than normal. Warm weather in October and the first part of November helped dry the corn down better than expected. Corn yields northwest of Storm Lake were good to average overall. We were expecting a little higher yields on many farms. The extremely wet June was likely to blame for the reduced yields which caused shallow root development and loss of Nitrogen. Yields in the corn were variable between 160 and 210 bushels per acre.

Soybean harvest was finished in October. Yields were generally better than expected on well drained soils, but below average on fields with less drainage. Soybeans were behind all season from the cool weather. The rainfall in August helped make the soybean crop respectable.

The grain markets bottomed out in early October. They are making a slow recovery, but are still below breakeven for many producers. The demand for corn and soybeans is strong, but the upside potential of prices is limited by a very large supply. Planting season is just getting started in South America, so weather there will start to influence the markets.