Rain causes pause in soybean harvest

How much crop ends up in the grain bin usually depends upon seed varieties, fertilizer, soil types and rainfall. Farmers can control the first two, but pretty much have no say in the second two.

Soil type and rainfall are again showing their vital role as the 2008 harvest kicked into high gear last week. Hutchinson-area farmers set up their combines with the soybean heads and rolled through their fields until rain Monday night into Tuesday forced them to pause for a couple of days.

“I think we are seeing yields in the mid-40s, and occasionally in the mid-50s. It all depends on what soils they have and what rain they got,” said Ken Petersen, owner of Petersen Service Center, a grain elevator and feed mill in Cedar Mills.

That is what Michael Conner, general manager at Hutchinson Co-op, also was seeing. He estimated about 50 percent of the beans have been harvested. He called it “an average crop” thus far. Shorter maturity beans likely are yielding lower, but better weather in August helped some.

“Later beans took advantage of August rains and probably are approaching 50 bushels (per acre),” he said.

Soybean and corn prices have slipped from record highs in early summer.

Read the complete story in the Leader’s Oct. 9 print edition.

(Terry Davis is a Hutchinson Leader staff writer. E-mail him at davis@hutchinsonleader.com.)