Indiana’s statewide 77 percent complete corn harvest and 87 percent complete soybean harvest are also about the rate of progress in the Fort Wayne area.
“You get to my southern area and everybody’s pretty well wrapped up, and then you get to Fort Wayne and north and we’re on the home stretch, and then Northwest Ohio is about the same.”
In the final Channel Seed harvest update this season, Luke Hesterman, Field Sales Representative with Channel Seed says it is the most variable crop of corn and soybeans he has ever experienced.
“It’s a mixed bag,” he explained. “There’s good corn that was planted in April, and you go 5 miles a week later and there’s a significant difference right there. There was some disease pressure in certain areas, tar spot and crown rot. We really saw fungicide applications paid this year, two pass programs at tassel and then 25 days later. We’re seeing 15 to 20 bushel (yield bump) and standability is just incredible.”
As Hesterman describes how little rain his part of the state received, it is easy to understand how some crops fell short of the norm.
“We went from July all the way through September to October, I don’t think if you looked at FieldView we’ve gotten more than an inch of rain over two and a half months’ time period. So, all things considered, as dry as it has been we are probably pretty fortunate the crop is as good as what it has been,” Hesterman said. “I would just say, soybeans you could just follow maturities. You get up to about a 2.8, pretty decent beans and then they started going south, and then where they picked up some rains and got into the little bit later group 3 beans, they start to pick up yield there.”
He said properly timed fungicide applications successfully mitigated the tar spot risk this year. That should help corn yields in his area get to about the average overall. Soybean yields might end up 15-20 percent below average.
Hesterman is based out of Ft. Wayne and works with farmers in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio. Hear much more in the full HAT and Channel Seed update here:
