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The latest USDA data shows Iowa soybeans at a mere 33% good to excellent. That’s only 6% better than conditions at this time last year, with soybean quality only 27% good to excellent statewide.
Carlisle farmer Corey Goodhue, pictured above, says this year’s problems started with cold, wet planting conditions. That spread planting dates over a two-month window, brought on slow emergence, and gave him problems getting weeds controlled in a timely fashion.
Even into the summer, Goodhue says his luck didn’t exactly hold up; the crop was slow to develop over July and many of the late-planted beans have lacked the necessary moisture to fill the pods. He expects ripening to be uneven.
Hot, dry weather, so common statewide since late August, can make the soybean plant simply shut down. Goodhue says the heat was welcome. It’s the lack of soil moisture and precipitation that has him concerned.
Apart from poor weather, Goodhue says there hasn’t been a lot of other pressure on his crop, save for killing some weeds. He reports insect pressure is practically nonexistent.
The next problem his crop will face will come later this fall, with the first hard freeze, possibly in late September or October. If the frost hits early enough, Goodhue says some of his crop is vulnerable.
However, Goodhue adds his corn crop is doing a little better.
We got a lot of our corn crop planted before that snow in May. The corn that was planted before that looks pretty good, actually. I think we’ll have a decent corn crop.
We’re concerned about how slow we were to accumulate growing degree units (days), so I think it’ll be a wet crop, unless things stay warm and we can get it dried down.
I think we’re seeing a lot of stress in our sandy places; a lot of kernel abortion, so that will obviously impact our yield.
Goodhue has made it farther than some. In Iowa, USDA’s Farm Service Agency found 613,967 prevent plant acres of corn and 106,381 prevent plant acres of soybeans, likely due to poor planting conditions this spring.
