Ralph Lents

Harvest is nearly completed for Iowa farmers, with only five-percent of corn remaining according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s weekly Crop Progress and Conditions report.

Menlo farmer and Iowa Promotion Board District 7 Director Ralph Lents says he finished his harvest on November 19th, and was grateful to have not as many challenges as his friends across the state when it came to wet crops and propane shortages, “I have a pretty good soybean yield this year, a lot of low 60 bushels a yield so I’m very pleased with the soybeans. Corn was very up and down, depending on you know if you had some really good soils you had some pretty good yields. The corn yields ran from 175-210 is where they ran, moreso under 200. But again weather affected it greatly with the soils and it seems like the further south you went, the more yields dropped off.”

Lents says he’s now focused on farm management at the end of the year such as filing yield information with his crop insurance agent and choosing which commodity title coverage to file for under the 2018 Farm Bill. He advises other producers to be calculating their inputs for seed, fertilizer, and other chemicals this month to determine your cost of production for grain marketing.