News

Missouri corn harvest underway

Corn harvest has been underway in southeast Missouri since the first of September.  Jim Stuever farms in Dexter and says they got started later than they wanted to. He tells Brownfield Ag News, “We wanted to start the last week of August and it rained for about 10 to 14 days there at the last of August and kind of held us out of the field for a while.”

Stuever, whose crops are irrigated, says, weeks of rain in late April and early May, plus a hot dry spell in late June and early July caused some problems for corn. But, overall, he tells Brownfield, yields are good, “I’m gonna give it a pretty wide range of a 150 to 210 (bpa) – would be the area that it falls into, just depending on fields and how well the irrigation and the weather and the Mother Nature rains hit it.”

In the opposite corner of Missouri, in the northwest, harvest is several weeks away for some farmers, like Blake Hurst, the president of the Missouri Farm Bureau. He says some of his neighbors in Atchison County have started harvesting corn. He told Brownfield last week, “I’m hearing moisture at 20, 21. That’s typically a little wetter than we like to start but we’re getting close. We’re excited about it.”

Some areas of the state got heavy rain last week with an average of just under two inches statewide.  The Missouri Ag Statistics office of the USDA says, as of Sunday, 25% of Missouri’s corn was harvested, similar to last year but below the average. Corn maturity at 82% is well ahead of last year. Soybeans turning color reached 55 percent, ahead of the average. Soybeans dropping leaves progressed to 21 percent. Cotton bolls opening reached 51 percent, compared to 49 percent for the 5-year average. Sorghum harvest was 8 percent complete.