Indiana soybean harvest is moving right along and ramped up corn harvest should be following. Early returns suggest yields will be varied, just as the quality of the crop was variable throughout the season.
“In my complete professional experience, I’m seeing more variability in these yields than I can recollect over those multi decades,” says analyst Mike Silver of Kokomo Grain.
The recent run of nearly perfect weather has allowed for significant progress to be made.
“We do have some producers that here in the next day or so we’re going to wrap up completely their soybean harvest and move deeper into corn. So, harvest pace is accelerating, although it does lag the five year average at this point.”
Based on reports he receives from their multiple terminals around the state, including Howard, Tippecanoe, Pulaski, Madison, Miami, Johnson and Bartholomew Counties, Silver says soybean yields are “perhaps better than expected” although still variable.
“The late August rains really helped the soybean crop,” he told HAT. “Still extreme variability depending on who got the rain and when, but soybean yields are coming in pretty well across Indiana. The corn yields, there’s variability in that, but we’re seeing some surprisingly good corn yields. We’re off from the five year APH histories, but there are some instances that I can document that some folks have yields as good as last year and a few folks have some of the best ever yields. But again, it depends on planting date and timeliness of rains and the other stressors that were in the market during the summer.”
And where does the evidence suggest those better yields are coming from?
“In the northern tier counties across the state, the yields are the best and that’s where the majority of those near record or record yields are. Here in portions of northwest central Indiana, yields are better than we thought they were going to be at the time of the Pro Farmer tour. They’re better.”