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Crop Watch: Iowa corn breaks barriers but Illinois disappoints -Braun

The 2024 Crop Watch corn and soybean harvest is quickly coming to a close with five fields harvested last week and one in progress as of Monday, leaving just two out of 22 total fields that have yet to be started.

Prolonged dryness across the U.S. Corn Belt has facilitated abundant field work. As of Oct. 13, the U.S. corn and soybean harvest paces were the date’s fastest since 2012, and last week should feature another good leap in progress.

Crop Watch producers have been rating yield potential on a 1-to-5 scale throughout the season, finalizing the score upon harvest. Yield potential incorporates both visible and nonvisible elements where 3 is around farm average yield, 4 is solidly above average and 5 is record or close to it.

Crop Watch corn fields in eastern Iowa, western and southeastern Illinois, and South Dakota were harvested last week. These new results dropped the 11-field, average corn yield to 3.32 from 3.41 a week earlier.

The South Dakota corn was slightly better than expected and just above average, though the southeastern Illinois corn was extremely disappointing, finishing at 3. A 4.25 had been expected prior to harvest, but the overly wet spring coupled with late-season dryness proved an unfavorable combination.

The western Illinois corn finished at the expected 2 and eastern Iowa came in at the predicted 5. However, the eastern Iowa corn yield was a stunning 10% over the previous record, and most of the producer’s corn results are aligning the same way.

Visually, the eastern Iowa corn did not look overly special throughout the season, particularly after less-than-ideal spring weather. But the producer chalks up the winning yields to an improvement in seed genetics coupled with mild weather and timely summer rains.

The western Iowa corn has yet to be harvested, but that producer is also finding a lot of record corn yields across his fields. The success of the Iowa corn should partly offset the less stellar results in Illinois and the relatively average crops in other states.

The Crop Watch soybean harvest finished up on a very positive note last week with the Ohio field, ending at 4.25 versus the predicted 2. That finalizes the 11-field average soybean yield at 3.64, near the season’s highest, better than last year and equal with 2022.

Ohio has struggled with drought all season, making the results hard to anticipate. The Crop Watch corn field produced the worst yields since 2012, but just 5 miles away, the Crop Watch soybeans caught slightly more rain at the right time.

The Crop Watch producers report that most farmers in their areas are likely to conclude harvest efforts either this week or next week. The North Dakota corn field is likely two weeks away from harvest, and near-average results are expected.
Source: Reuters (Writing by Karen Braun, Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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