Corn Harvest is slowed by weather!

Wet ground slows corn harvest
Tuesday, November 18, 2008

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - The corn harvest continues to fall behind normal in South Dakota because of wet ground.

The weekly report shows only 59 percent of the corn crop has been harvested. The five-year average for this date is 91 percent.

The Agricultural Statistics Service said much of the corn being harvested has a high moisture content, so it has to be dried at the elevator or on the farm.

Twenty-five percent of the state reports surplus moisture. Seventy-two percent is adequate.

Some northeastern South Dakota farmers got things going again over the weekend.

"We just need to get it dry," Chuck Langner, the Codington County Extension educator, said Friday. "The last two years, we were wrapping up harvest the first week in November.

"So we're probably a good three weeks behind."

Ear loss has been reported in some fields. Some dry, sunny days would help put the finishing touches on the harvest, but Langner said such weather can be scarce this time of year.

"The problem is, we just don't have that many warm, sunny days this time of year to help dry things down," he said. "A couple of guys are going, but some are saying they're going to have to wait for a (complete) freeze-up before they start again.

"We've had cold temperatures, but not enough to freeze the ground."

The northeast has a patchwork of snow. Most of Codington County and the surrounding area got a good blast from the early November storm. But just to the northeast, much of Grant County escaped it.

And there's a line running north and south a few miles east of South Shore where there was suddenly no snow. The Twin Brooks and Milbank area got little, if any, snow from the storm.

Duaine Marxen, Grant County Extension educator, said farmers there have taken advantage of that break.

"We're pretty well caught up," on the corn harvest, Marxen said. "I'll bet we have less than 10 or 15 percent of the crop left out there.

"I'm not sure what the yields have been like yet at this point, but the harvest has been good."

Langner said that besides not being able to harvest the corn, farmers with cattle are losing the opportunity for grazing their animals on the corn stalks after harvest.

"When you start getting toward the end of November, you just don't like to see that corn standing out there," Langner said. "We've had some really good yield reports overall, and I think the harvest is pretty good.

"We just need some good drying weather and turn this thing around."

Information from: Watertown Public Opinion, http://www.thepublicopinion.com

A service of the Associated Press(AP)

Minn. farmers harvesting largest corn crop ever

NORSELAND, Minn. (AP) - The U.S Department of Agriculture predicts Minnesota will harvest its largest corn crop in history.

And the United States will enjoy its second-largest corn harvest ever.

The 2008 growing season has been a wild ride.

Spring planting arrived late, and floods ravaged the heart of the Corn Belt. Then panic hit the grain market, shooting up grain prices.

Then just as quickly, everything reversed at midsummer. Good growing weather returned. The troubled economy softened demand. Grain prices plunged.

Darin Newsom, senior analyst for commodity information firm DTN, says the yields will be good, despite this year's crop going through almost every conceivable hardship.

Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press,


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