Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey says the latest U-S-D-A crop report shows good progress in the harvest. According to Northey, “Last week we had five percent of the corn, seven percent of the beans out. Now we’re up to 13 percent of the corn — 32 percent of the soybeans.”  Northey says he’s hearing good things about yields.

“It’s gonna vary every place, but certainly in some areas of north-west and north-central Iowa we’re seeing 60-bushel soybeans where sometimes those are normally 50-bushel soybeans. Certainly corn in a lot of places over 200 bushels (an acre) in place that don’t always get that,” according to Northey. “We are going to have other parts of Iowa that are not going to have their best crop, but in some of these areas, that’s the best crop they’ve harvested.”

The corn harvest is 10 days ahead of last year, but eight days behind average. The soybean harvest is one week ahead of last year, but one day behind average. He expects thing to move forward quite a bit this week. “If we get a good week this week and dodge some moisture in the middle of the week, we’ll be moving along real good,” Northey says.

He says the crop appears to be pretty dry. There have been some concerns about the beans not being dry enough. “Stems are a little damp in some places, so it makes it a little hard to harvest. It takes a lot of power to get those damp stems through the combine, but with good yields, you’ll certainly take that,” Northey says.

Northey farms corn and beans near Spirit Lake.

(Radio Iowa)