NEWELLTON, La. (RFD News) — Late-summer heat combined with persistent drought has caused a number of challenges for growers this year.
Meade Hardwick with Hardwick Planting Company said conditions changed quickly after mid-July.
“The rains really stopped around July 15th, and it got really hot. Summer set in pretty hard. It got really hot and pretty dry. We had some sporadic rains, but the big afternoon showers that we get along the Mississippi River really just didn’t materialize, and so it started taking the top end out of the bean crop. The corn was pretty much made at that point, so it was largely unaffected by the hot, dry weather, but we had some dryland soybeans that really took it on the chin there, and those started to kind of falter, where they were set up really well with the June rains, but just couldn’t finish.”
Despite the growing list of challenges this year, Hardwick said soybean yields are coming in better than expected.
“Our yields are running above average. Right now we’re at about 65 bushels, and we’ve harvested about 3,500 acres. Again, that is mostly irrigated, so very few dryland acres in that, and that’s running a little bit above average. We are usually, with our larger scale of soybean acres, we’re somewhere between 58 and 63 bushels is kind of our range, so we’re sort of right there in the middle right now, or maybe a little tick above that. Disease pressure has been very limited the last two years, and insect pressure has been extremely low.”
USDA will provide a new look at crop conditions Monday with its Crop Progress report.
