Southeast Iowa Crop Conditions

The beautiful fall weather carried through most of last week and looks to continue with a rainy day mixed in her and there.

Soybeans are getting very close to maturity. The rain yesterday (Monday) was likely enough to knock off the last
leaves of some mature fields. A little dry, sunny weather is all it will take for some fields to be harvest ready.
There were a few fields of very early soybeans harvested last week but the majority will be ready within the next
two weeks.

Corn is inching closer to maturity. The dry, sunny weather last week allowed the cattle feeders to get a lot of silage chopped and moved to bunker storage. Crop insurance adjuster yields for silage have been extremely variable.

The USDA gave us their September crop estimates last Tuesday morning. Most traders were expecting minor production cuts in both corn and soybeans. The USDA once again surprised us with slightly higher corn and soybean yield predictions. Corn was predicted to yield 169.9 bushels per acre and soybeans at 49.9 bushels per acre. The markets initially reacted negatively but quickly moved on and traded closer to even by the end of the trading day.

Here is a picture of a soybean field that was taken the day before it was harvested last week.