Strong winds swept through much of Indiana on Saturday taking down more Indiana corn. Many parts of Indiana saw wind gusts on Saturday topping 60 miles per hour. Downed trees and power lines were common, and so was downed corn.
As HAT has been reporting all harvest, stalk issues in corn have already caused a good deal of lodging. Pioneer agronomist Brian Early said the windstorm this past weekend made the situation even worse.
“We have seen corn going down all harvest long, and this wind storm just took down more.” Early said farmers noticed weak stalks from the first field they harvested, and this prompted many to focus on getting corn harvested first before switching to soybeans. “Due to a lack of sunlight during grain fill, these plants really cannibalized the stalks. When you break them open, there is nothing inside.”
In some areas, corn harvest is complete. However, Early said most of the state is only about half way finished. “We still have close to half the corn still in the field, and even more soybeans have yet to be harvested.” The USDA reported on Monday that 65% of the corn statewide had been harvested, ahead of the 51% for the average.
The USDA update reported 67% of the soybeans had been harvested statewide. Early said the soybean harvest in North Central Indiana is moving much slower.
“Some quality issues have made it hard to get the soybeans harvested; but, with a long stretch of good weather, we should make considerable progress this week.” Quality issues in soybeans stem from high disease levels this summer, according to Early. “We had a lot of frog eye leaf spot and stem blight that we typically don’t deal with,” he stated. He told HAT the area north of Kokomo was especially hard hit.