(Radio Iowa) – The southern part of the state took a little longer to finish up the harvest this year compared to the north. Iowa State Extension field agronomist, Aaron Saeugling covers the southwest corner of the state, and says a wet spring is to blame. “Clearly, a lot of that was delayed planting. We had a pretty good stretch of rain in May, and so I had a lot of corn that was planted the last week of May, in the first two weeks of June, and so that delays harvest.” he says. He says a delay in southern counties has less of an impact that in the north. “We have a longer window in the fall than northern Iowa in terms of harvest. And so occasionally, if you have later higher moisture corn, they’ll kind of hold off combining,” Saeugling says. “So it’s not unusual for us to combine corn at Thanksgiving, and in northern Iowa, that’s they don’t like to do that, because Mother Nature can come.”

Saeugling covers Pottawattamie, Cass, Adair, Mills, Montgomery, Adams, Union, Fremont, Page and Ringgold counties. He says the late start and later harvest didn’t seem to impact harvest results. “You know, ironically, they still pulled some pretty good yields. There were isolated pockets, kind of depending on, you know, when the dry spell came through. I mean, we were, we were in the Drought Monitor at certain parts of the summer,” he says. “So depending if that corn was, you know, silken tasseling at the wrong time, those fields were probably impacted a little more than others, but I have other places that corn yields were exceptionally good.” Northeast Iowa saw a relatively wet summer, but I-S-U field agronomist Terry Basol says things dried out to allow for a quick harvest and dry crops.

“The moisture was low enough so that there wasn’t as much drying needed. That helped the economics, especially considering the lower commodity prices over the past few years. Every little bit certainly helps the growers,” Basol says. Basol says dry weather had a secondary impact as lower river levels impacted shipping. “There’s a fair amount of fertilizer that comes up from the Gulf to Iowa, Minnesota, and the other states along the river, so that’s another thing to keep an eye on, as well,” he says.

This marks the third fall in a row the southern Mississippi has been below average levels.

(Grant Winterer, Iowa Public Radio, contributed to this story.)

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa food pantries and food banks could lose a major source of food if the current Farm Bill isn’t extended. Michelle Book is C-E-O of the Food Bank of Iowa, which distributes food to pantries and other feeding organizations in 55 Iowa counties.

“Of 2.5 million pounds that we distributed in November, 1.25 million of that came from USDA,” Book says. “We have 37 trucks that will arrive at the Food Bank of Iowa to unload in December and 24 of those are USDA loads, so it’s critically important that we continue to be supported in that way by the USDA.”

The U-S Department of Agriculture provides about half of the food the Food Bank of Iowa distributes. Book says it’s not only canned fruits and vegetables, but meat, and sometimes fresh produce. “The USDA Commodity Food started in the 1980s with the blocks of orange cheese and today the variety of just astounding,” Book says. “Over the course of my time at the Food Bank of Iowa, we’ve received leg of lamb and white fish, a lot of frozen fruits and vegetables. We get a lot of dairy from the USDA.”

Book, who’s been C-E-O of the Food Bank of Iowa for nearly nine years, says she’s concerned budget-cutting talks in D.C. might lead to a new Farm Bill that provides less emergency food. “That food has proven to be, over the last few years, very healthy, nutritious food. It helps the food banks serve neighbors in need,” Book says. “It also helps our local agricultural producers as well, keeping prices up, but we are concerned that we’ll see a lack of USDA food coming our way in upcoming years.”

Book made her comments during an appearance this weekend on the “Iowa Press” program on Iowa P-B-S.