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Harvest push reveals pleasant surprises for Minnesota farmers

A respite from wet weather has farmers in southern Minnesota catching up on harvest and finding some pleasant surprises.

Farm management analyst Kent Thiesse says soybean yields are ranging from the mid-50’s to low 60’s with better uniformity than a year ago.

“Last year we had a lot of drown-out areas from excess rainfall.  The other good news is the corn that’s out in the field is drying down in this nice weather as well, which will help save on drying costs.”

Because of rain earlier this month, some farmers switched to harvesting corn.

Thiesse tells Brownfield consistently strong yields have been found in those fields too.

“Very similar to the soybeans (with) a lot of uniformity.  A year ago we had a lot of up-and-down corn yields, some excellent but also some drown-out damage and yields more in the average range.  This year a lot more uniformity and the quality of the corn is very good.”

Thiesse says the sentiment going into harvest was that corn and soybean yields would be lower than 2016.

While he still expects that to be true for Minnesota, Thiesse suggests this year’s production will be surprisingly close to last year’s record levels.