The soybean harvest has been hot, dry and dusty this fall, unusual weather for this late in the season.
The weather beats last year, though, allowed Joe Sutherland, as he watched brother Dick harvest the last remnants of a field northwest of Iola Monday afternoon, making quick work of it as the 35-foot head on his big Gleaner combine made wide swaths.
Last year mud made the harvest difficult. Joe recalled fields so mushy that the wide go-anywhere combine tires cut rim-deep even in no-till fields.
This year’s yields are nothing exceptional — some in the low teens and few above 30 bushels an acre — but, considering the stress the beans have been under, that’s not bad. The Sutherlands figure they’ll average 30 bushels an acres, about what Marvin Lynch, who monitors a wide range of the harvest from Piqua Farmers Co-op, thinks will be the overall take.
The Sutherlands will finish up in a couple of days, provided the dry weather holds and they don’t run into any mechanical problems, a nagging fear at harvest time.
Monday, after cutting a stand woven among old oil wells, the Sutherlands spent the better part of an hour replacing sections (wedge-shaped sickles) on the lead edge of the head, broken by run-ins with debris in the field.
LYNCH thinks the soybean harvest is about 60 percent complete and comes on the heels of a record corn intake for the Piqua elevator.
At 1.2 million bushels, more was carried there than ever before. Yields, as with soybeans, were not particularly high, but with little wheat sewn during last year’s wet fall, many more acres were planted to corn.
Piqua has 1.3 million bushels of storage and by Friday night the tanks were full.
Lynch contacted buyers who had placed orders and by Sunday a constant stream of trucks had opened up 100,000 bushels of storage. Some of the corn went to the ethanol plant in Garnett, more was hauled to the huge poultry operations in Arkansas.
“We took in 20,000 bushels of beans Sunday afternoon and probably will have that much brought in today (Monday) before we shut down about 7 o’clock,” he said.
Newly available storage will be slow to refill, though. Both grains are being hauled from the elevator while farmers are bringing in beans.
He estimated the area’s corn yield may be as high as 110 bushels an acre.
First-of-harvest prices fetched a discouraging $3.50 a bushel.
But after the federal government decreased the national corn harvest estimate by four bushels an acre, the price soared to over $5 locally.
The new estimate coupled with yield hurt by wet weather turned the trick, Lynch said.
“We’re paying $4.93 today (Monday) and have bid $5.10 for December corn,” or what farmers will contract to sell six weeks from now when consumption eats into supplies, he said.
Meanwhile, beans are fetching a little over $11 a bushel, which takes some of the sting out of yields that were hurt by weather that turned so hot in August that blooms fell from plants before they could develop into pods.
“Beans have had a lot of stress this year,” Lynch said.
At times weather was too wet, then it got dry and hot. Bugs and disease also had their turn at ravaging the slender-stalk bean plants.
“Beans are pretty tough, tougher than a lot of people give them credit for being,” Lynch said.
A concern when stress becomes so severe is shattering, or pods popping open and spilling oil-rich beans on the ground.
“A lot of years that isn’t too much of a concern, but it is this year because of the stress,” he said.
Consequently, farmers are eager to send combines to picking in fields when moisture content — 13 percent is considered dry — is just right.
“You’ll never get more bushels than the day soybeans are ready to cut,” Lynch said.
