Snow Brings Late Harvest to A Standstill
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Did the snow stop you in your tracks? It's brought the late corn harvest to a halt for farmers.
The local corn harvest is about 95% done, but in Siouxland there are still thousands of acres that need to be harvested, and getting to that corn just got a lot harder thanks to the many inches of snow that got dumped on the fields.
No doubt about it, farmers were faced with plenty of challenges this year, including one of the wettest October's on record.
After a warm, dry November, local growers were hoping to get on track with the harvest. Joel DeJong, an agronomist for the Iowa State Extension office, says this year has been anything but average.
"We're definitely behind where we would normally be. Rarely do we see a field that, in the last few years, that hasn't been harvested before we get a full snow," said DeJong.
Chris Pederson of the Kingsley Farmer's Co–Op says he hasn't seen a harvest this late for many years. He says with the snow and the drifts, many farmers he spoke with know it's near impossible to get equipment into the fields.
"[One farmer] says there's enough drifts in there that he's not going to be back in for several days, if at all. He thought if he has to leave it 'til next spring, he will," said Pedersen.
Pedersen says others are willing to try and get into the fields so they can have the harvest over and done with.
"They may have a few rows that they'll have to leave for a while, but they want to get the rest of it in the bin."
With a bigger crop this year and a good selling price for corn, Pedersen says farmers realize that waiting to harvest until spring means waiting to get paid and risking damage to what's left of the crop.
"If we got 1,500 to 2,000 acres to come in, that's another 3–to–4,000 bushels that needs to come into the elevator and that's not chump change for these guys," said Pedersen.
Those who can't get into the fields will just have to hope that their crops can hang in until the combine can come through.
Pedersen says in the meantime, colder temperatures are actually a good thing. If there's too much of a warm up, the snow can melt and make the fields muddy and even harder to get into.
DeJong says finishing harvest in the spring could slow down planting and hurt next year's yield.
