© 2024 Iowa Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Harvest A Bit Behind Last Year's Pace

Michael Leland/IPR
Corn harvest this past weekend in Warren County

Iowa’s corn and soybean harvest continues behind last year, and the five-year average.

Today’s USDA update says statewide, 71-percent of the corn crop is harvested.  Central and southeast Iowa harvest work is a bit more advanced.

In Eastern Iowa, Randy Toenjes blames wet fields and too much corn, too fast.

“We have about 250-acres yet to harvest,” says Toenjes, who farms about 1400 acres near Monticello. “We’re out of space right now. The bins are full and we’re waiting for those to get moved and then we’ll finish up. We should be able to wrap everything up in five or six days.”

Toenjes says his soybean harvest is already completed.

“The soybeans were the best bean we’ve ever raised,” he said. “We topped yields on all the farms by five bushels per acre versus our previous high yield. I was expecting over the top yields in corn as we did in soybeans, but it wasn’t quite there.”

USDA says statewide, 89-percent of the soybean crop is harvested.  That’s about a week behind last year and the average for this date.

But, southwest and southcentral Iowa is lagging even further, with at least a third of the soybeans there still in the field.