Soybean Yields Recover After Wet Spring

Harvest season means motorists and farm implements will be sharing the road. This year’s harvest is moving along well, thanks to dry weather continuing in recent weeks.

That’s according to Purdue Extension Agricultural Educator Phil Woolery. “We’ve had some really good weather this fall for harvesting, good drying weather,” he says. “So at this point, I’d say in our area, most of the soybeans have been harvested already. At rate, we’re probably above the average a little bit, so we’ve had really good weather to help farmers out that way and good drying weather. So at least for the corn, they’ve been having to do less drying on the farm, so that will save them some money.” Woolery estimates around three quarters of the corn has been harvested so far.

He says local soybean yields have recovered well after heavy rains earlier this year, “Considering we had a very, very wet spring – June, early July – the yields have been pretty good, been about average for soybeans; but for corn, it’s been kind of all over – so, wide- ranging, depending on how much damage the corn received. But the soybeans seemed to recover a lot better than the corn did from that wet weather we had in June.”

Woolery says in spite of the turnaround in the weather, he expects farmers to have a tough year financially because commodity prices for corn and soybeans are both down.