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Green stems making for a difficult soybean harvest

An agronomy manager says green stems on soybeans are causing problems for many farmers this fall.

Randy Hagen with Monsanto tells Brownfield it’s often tougher to cut green stems and process them through the combine.

“Green stems are also a bit of a nuisance as they end up getting into the combine with the seed, because that also tends to make the product a lot wetter and also keeps the plant a bit wetter.”

Hagen says the issue is more common in the northern Corn Belt, and occurs when conditions prevent soybeans from maturing normally.

Waiting for a hard freeze could be helpful this fall, but comes with some risk.

“A lot of people don’t like to do that because you could have another issue called pod shatter.  So waiting too long can cause more problems that way.”

He says soybeans with green stems can still produce high yields and good quality.

For future growing seasons, Hagen suggests careful consideration of developmental factors like variety selection, planting population and row spacing.