2014 LOGAN COUNTY FARM OUTLOOK MAGAZINE LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com November 4, 2014 17
that mud rolls on the combine tires, farmers
are becoming more anxious about what
this, once to be thought best year in a
decade, will turn out to be.
As the week of October 20th began, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture said
Illinois corn harvest was at only 23 percent
complete, with soybeans jumping ahead
only slightly at 32 percent complete.
However, in that same week, Farm
Journal Ag Web reported soybean harvest
was 53 percent complete with the corn
harvest lagging behind at only 31 percent
complete.
Though genetically days to maturity for
corn have shortened a great deal over
the last 50 years, days to maturity for
soybeans remains much the same. With
corn planting being late this year, the wet
weather, high moisture content on corn, and
Sudden Death hitting many central Illinois
soybean fields; the end result has been that
beans were ready first this year.
While wet weather may not be what the
doctor ordered this fall, the fear of a warm
sunny week in mid-October was just as
concerning for soybean producers. “As
the sun warms and dries the pods, they will
pop open,” one farmer feared, “and when
they do, then it is beans on the ground, not
in the hopper, and there goes your yields.”
While downed corn, if it happens can still
be harvested with directional combining, or
even hand gleaning, when a soybean hits
the ground, its potential for harvest is lost.
So, the bottom line is, the beans that
haven’t experienced sudden death
syndrome, or been attacked by Cyst
Nematode, are doing well. Up until the
third week in October, they were just
hanging out in the field. But with warm,
dry weather predicted that week, the fear of
many became popping pods.
Put all these facts into one bag and what
we see in the field is that soybean harvest
is taking precedence over corn harvest.
So, are we seeing a flip in the harvesting
trends? Or, is this just history repeating
itself. Some of the more mature farmers
in Logan County will cringe to recall the
harvest seasons of the mid-1970’s. In a
couple of those years, farmers gave up
their Thanksgiving holiday for cold turkey
sandwiches in the field, and the thing they
wanted most from Santa was to be able to
say that harvest was finally finished.
Undoubtedly everyone is going to be
wishing for a dry November so they can
put an end to this year’s up-side-down
harvest.
