According to the USDA, 56 percent of Indiana’s corn and 79 percent of the state’s soybeans are harvested.
“We’re in the home stretch. There will be some guys finishing up—not everybody, but hopefully here in the next couple weeks we’ll have it wrapped up,” says Luke Hesterman, Field Sales Representative with Specialty Hybrids. He’s based out of Ft. Wayne and works with farmers across Allen County and northeastern Indiana.
Hesterman says soybeans yields started off strong early on in the growing season, but those yield numbers have been lower further along in the fall.
“We probably have a pretty close to average crop in my area,” he says. “The early Group 2 soybean guys started out above average and they were pretty excited. Then, with certain maturities and the dry weather, we had just did not handle stress quite so well, so they fell off a little bit. Then we get back into the fuller season beans and they were able to capture some of those late rains that then equated to pod size and yield, so all the guys are wrapping them up now and are pretty excited to finally have that behind us because it’s been a crawl this year.”
Hesterman says corn yields around Fort Wayne have fared far better than the soybean yields.
“Corn is a different story. It’s above average and guys are wondering where all the yields are coming from,” says Hesterman. “It definitely has some moisture with it, but last week we ran for four days and couple of those nights guys ran all night and got a pretty good push on things. I’m going to say corn in this area is probably 65-to-70 percent done now. Hopefully, corn dried down a little bit last week with the heat that we had at the tail end of the week and guys aren’t sitting in line at the elevator all day.”
Click below to hear C.J. Miller’s full conversation with Luke Hesterman with Specialty Hybrids.
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This update is sponsored by Specialty Hybrids. At Specialty Hybrids, it’s your field, our Specialty. Find your local field sales representative and dealer online at www.specialtyhybrids.com.