News

Michigan harvest better than expected

A Midwest farmer says after a very dry summer harvest has been much better than expected.

Carl Bednarski grows corn, soybeans, dry beans, sugarbeets and white wheat in Tuscola County. He tells Brownfield he just finished most of harvest and yields were close to average.  “The dry beans were in line.  Soybeans were probably the pleasant surprise.  They yielded very well and great to see the yields there.  Corn was also yielding better than we thought it would.”

He says early sugarbeet harvest started in August, but he’s waiting until at least next week to get the majority of his crop out of the ground.  “If you start getting into the cooler nights and the sunnier days, the temperature gets cooler and the sugars have a tendency to rise. With sugarbeets we get paid not only on tonnage, we get paid on sugar content and it pays to see if we can get more sugar out of those beets.”

Also the president of Michigan Farm Bureau, Bednarski says the basic crops in Michigan’s Thumb haven’t changed since his father’s generation, but more niche opportunities like non-GMO dry beans and organic are adding to the region’s diversity.