News

Excellent soybean yields reported

Projections for record soybean yields across the Midwest appear to be coming to fruition.

Greg Whitmore, who farms near Shelby in east-central Nebraska, says it’s one of his best soybean crops ever.

“Most of our irrigated (beans) has been running right around 70 bushels,” Whitmore says. “The dryland has maybe dropped back into the 60’s.”

Chris Pederson, who manages the Farmers Cooperative Elevator at Kingsley in northwest Iowa, says they’re seeing excellent bean yields as well.

“We’ve been running the high 50’s to high 60’s,” says Pederson. “The size of the beans has been excellent. The moisture content has been high—we’ve averaged right at 13 in terms of moisture coming in so far. And we’ve got approximately 20 percent of the crop out so far.”

Both Whitmore and Pederson say the corn is still too wet harvest, with moisture levels running in the high 20’s to around 30 percent.  Whitmore says he would welcome some warm and dry weather to help with drydown on corn.

“Last week, our agronomist was around giving us stalk quality ratings and we were in the upper 20’s on everything,” Whitmore says. “So some sunshine, warmer temps and nice breezes would go a long ways for us.”

Whitmore expects better-than-average corn yields.  In some cases, he says, “even better than last year”.

AUDIO: Greg Whitmore

AUDIO: Chris Pederson

Dennis Morrice, KLEM in Le Mars, Iowa contributed to this story.