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ISU agronomist reports on crop damage

Millions of acres of corn in Iowa and Illinois were flattened by last Monday’s intense derecho windstorm. 

Iowa State Extension field agronomist Meaghan Anderson spent the week evaluating the damage in central Iowa. She says it varies considerably from field-to-field and within fields.

“I just got a photo of a field that looks like it is 100 percent snapped off, or nearly 100 percent snapped off—and in other fields, it may depend on what part of the field you’re looking at,” Anderson says. “You know, are you looking north-south rows or east-west rows—even different varieties, some of them seem to kind of pinched over as opposed to leaning over.”

Anderson says most soybean fields, except those that received hail with the wind, appear to be okay.

“Beans looked really bad—they were all leaned over—and it really only took them maybe 24 hours to 48 hours for most of the beans to stand back up, with not much more than a little bit of leaf loss and a little bit of twisting,” she says. “Some of them are still kind of leaning over, but they’re holding each other up.”