Gordon Stoner has finished harvesting his durum - later than he first hoped, but earlier than he once feared.
“It was an ordeal, but we got it done. It’s one of the most spread-out harvests we’ve had,” says the Outlook, Mont., farmer, who began harvesting durum in late July. Outlook is in the northeast part of the state.
A long soggy stretch in late August and the first half of September repeatedly shut down his harvest, raising concern that he wouldn’t finish his durum until late October or even early November. But warm, sunny days in October allowed him to make rapid harvest progress and finish durum harvest by the middle of the month.
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“We got a week of warm weather, which really helped,” he says.
Stoner, who still has corn to harvest, is representative of many farmers in the Upper Midwest and on the Canadian prairies. Like him, beautiful autumn weather allowed them to catch up after weeks of rain delays.
Only 72 percent of Saskatchewan’s crops were harvested by Oct. 6, compared with the five-year average of 84 percent for the date, according to the provincial government.
Since Oct. 6, however, most farmers in the province have made rapid progress, says Gerrid Gust, who farms near Davidson, Saskatchewan, south of Saskatoon.
“We had a really good week,” he says.
He expected to finish both his flax and wheat the week of Oct. 13. Weather forecasts for the week were favorable.
Most other farmers in his area also were close to finishing harvest, though some producers elsewhere in the province still had as much as half of their crop to combine, he says.
Overall quality of this year’s harvest is poor because of excess moisture and disease, Gust says.
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Farmers on the Canadian prairies, like their peers in the Upper Midwest, grow a wide range of crops. The list includes wheat, soybeans, canola, oats, flax and barley.
Crops such as wheat and barley that fare best in cool weather are planted first, to avoid late-summer heat, and are the first to be harvested.
Though a few wet pockets remain, Upper Midwest farmers have harvested virtually all of their wheat. The weekly report on crop progress issued Oct. 14 by the National Agricultural Statistics Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, didn’t include harvest statistics for wheat, an indication that harvest has wrapped up.
Fast work on soybeans
But the NASS report showed, as expected, that Upper Midwest farmers took advantage of favorable October weather to catch up on soybean harvest.
In North Dakota, 64 percent of soybeans were harvested on Oct. 12, compared with 31 percent a week earlier and the five-year average of 62 percent on Oct. 12.
So, farmers in the state harvested one-third of their soybean crop in the week of Oct. 6 alone, according to NASS.
South Dakota and Minnesota soybean farmers did even a little better in the week.
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In South Dakota, 66 percent of soybeans were harvested on Oct. 12, compared with 25 percent a week earlier and the five-year average of 65 percent on Oct. 12.
In Minnesota, 62 percent of soybeans were harvested on Oct. 12, compared with 25 percent a week earlier and the five-year average 65 percent.
Minnesota farmers also enjoyed good October harvest conditions last year, says Bruce Schmoll, who farms in Claremont, Minn., south of Minneapolis.
“Other than that, I don’t remember another fall like this one,” he says.
Many soybean farmers in the state will be finished with harvest, or nearly so, by Oct. 20, he says.
Soybean yields vary greatly across the state. The wet spring hurt yields in some areas, as did widespread mid-September frost, Schmoll says.
Other farmers and ag officials in the Upper Midwest say the same thing about soybean yields.
The Upper Midwest corn harvest is just getting underway. More will be known when the next weekly NASS crop report is released Oct. 20.
