Harvest turning up strong yields statewide

Lawrence Onweller

We had quite a few rains last week — and around 2 inches in the last 10 days — so there’s still quite a few beans around in the area or at least around my house left to come out of the fields. We have about 200 acres or so to run, which will take about two days.

Corn has been good to really good. The disease and stuff didn’t seem to hurt it much.

The lowest corn yield I’ve heard about is probably 180 and then I heard up to 250 to 260 bushels. If they had a water issue like drowning out, soybean yields of 48 bushels was the lowest I’ve heard on up to the 70s at the high end. That’s been about our range. There were water issues on both sides, too much or too little.

A lot of the corn moisture has depended on the maturity and when it was planted. The lowest moisture I’ve heard of is about 20% and some fields were up to 28% where they just took the ends off and moved to another field to try and find some drier corn.

People will be out running today on the sand ground. I was surprised I didn’t see anybody running yesterday. We had been really dry and the biggest single rain we got was three-quarters of an inch at one time, and that was one of the earlier ones, so the conditions are not too bad. 

Doug Miller

We’re moving right along. We’re not quite three-quarters of the way finished with harvest. We finished our first-crop beans on Friday the 13th with very strong yields. The best beans we had were 82 bushels per acre and the farm averaged in the mid 70s. We still have 200 acres of double-crops to run. They’re not quite ready yet. 

We got the wheat planted on Oct. 13. We got rain last Thursday night into Friday, so we took this past weekend off and we’re getting back after it today. The rain really benefited the wheat and benefited us because we were getting pretty tired after the last two weeks. The wheat was up this weekend but you could barely see it. It’ll really bust out of the ground with the rain — we had over an inch. There’s an old saying: if you plant in the dust, your bins will bust. The wheat got planted with into the dust and then we got the rain.

After we got wheat planted, we started back into shelling corn and we’re still seeing very strong yields. Everything’s been excellent. I’ve been farming since high school and this is the best I’ve ever seen. We’re in a 230-acre field right now. We run everything across the scale and we’re still plugging away at it. It is in the 240s. We’re also fall spraying as time allows and we have enough help around.

If we have a good weather window we’ll switch over and get those double-crop beans when they’re ready. When you get into November, it’s sometimes tough to find good bean cutting weather.

Kyle Nietfeld

We got soybeans done, everything but the double-crops. They ran really well, above average. We’re happy with them. 

We got the rains in July and early August and the beans were pretty good, even on the tops of the hills and all the way across the whole field. There were some areas that yielded really well. Areas that missed the last rain in August were not as good, but they were all average to above average.

Where there was white mold, yield dropped down to probably about 60% of what the rest of the farm was in a few areas, but the rest of it really wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t as bad as we were expecting.

I think we timed wheat planting just right. We got it planted and it rained 2 days later. It really hasn’t been very fit to try to get back out there and plant wheat since. It’s been a little bit on the sticky side so we were lucky to get it in.

We had almost 2 inches of rain and with the cooler temperatures now, it’s been kind of tough to get the top to dry off. We’re leaving cleat marks in the field. It’s not wet and soupy by any means, but a week of dry weather wouldn’t hurt. The weather is looking nice.

The corn is wet, but the yields are good. Moisture has been anywhere from 22% to 27% in a little river bottom field. I think it’s going to be a long, drawn-out corn harvest with a lot of dryer gas used. We’re going to probably start back up here this morning. There are quite a few beans left in the area.

Jeff Magyar

Harvest is going well. We had wonderful conditions before the 2 inches of rain in this area. About half of our beans are done. For corn, not even 10% has been run. Our poorest beans were 39 bushels  in an area that missed the most rains. Everything else we’ve run has been in the 60s. If you didn’t have white mold, everyone’s happy.

We’re going to have to do some research to find something for white mold. I’ve been talking to farmers who have never had it on new ground that’s only had beans maybe one year. There shouldn’t be spores in the soil, but there were 40% to 50% yield losses from white mold in certain areas that should not have it. White mold was the worst in the early planted beans, probably due to the timing of the flowering. In a lot of the later beans, there’s no evidence whatsoever of white mold.

Corn moisture has been running 22% to 24%, normally we like it 22% or under. Because of the rain situation for the last week, we haven’t been able to run, so later this week we’ll be opening up some cornfields and seeing what the moisture is. If we have decent weather, we could maybe start running beans again tomorrow. 

Wheat acres were up. In places, guys we’re having trouble getting wheat seed toward the end. Conditions were very good for planting wheat.

We were very excited to see that Louis Dreyfus is investing in a soybean crush plant in Upper Sandusky. This will be wonderful for another market for Ohio and Indiana soybeans, whether it’s used for aviation fuel or there’ll be a lot of bean meal, which would be good for animal ag. It will be a 55-million-bushel capacity. This is a big plant. There was talk of this being in Indiana. I’m glad to see it in Ohio.