As farmers in the Raccoon Valley Radio-listening area wrap up the soybean harvest and continue working on corn, a local ISU Extension field agronomist expects yields to come in a bit lower this year.

Mike Witt says some issues seen this year for soybeans have been smaller and dried out beans. He also says that the August 10th derecho brought hail that particularly affected beans in northern Guthrie County. Witt shares some historical soybean data, “Guthrie County came in at about 54 bushels per acre, that was in 2019, in 2018 it was 52, and the average over the last 10 years has been about 50 bushels right on the nose. But it has been going progressively up in there so that’s why I was saying we might hit that average of 50 but in the previous years we’ve seen it up or closer to 60 bushels as an average for the county. So it will be more closer to the 10 year average than it will be to what we’ve had over the last few years.”

Witt also predicts that corn yields will also be near the 10-year-average for Guthrie County at 170 bushels per acre. This pales in comparison to last year, which Witt says was a pretty good year for corn with about 196 bushels per acre. Farmers in south central Iowa have about two-thirds of their corn for grain yet to be harvested according to last week’s Crop Progress and Condition report.