Late rains do little for Iowa crop
The derecho that hit a wide swath of Iowa missed Mark Mueller’s farm near Waverly last year, but a late August wind storm this year took a toll.
“We had some fields of corn flattened,” Mueller says. “But I can’t really complain. I’ve dodged a bullet with the weather so many times over the years.”
The late-August storms damaged crops in parts of Iowa, mostly in the Northeast, where there was some downed corn and assorted other crop damage.
Across the state, the crop quality varies dramatically. For some, especially in south central Iowa, this has been a good year. For others, the lack of rain has been a major problem, pulling corn yields down and causing August problems in the soybean crop.
“The crop is highly variable,” says Angie Rieck-Hinz, an Iowa State University Extension crop specialist for parts of northeast and north central Iowa. “Crop conditions are literally all over the place.”
Dry conditions were the biggest problems for most farmers in her area, Rieck-Hinz says. Recent rains caused flooding issues in some areas as rainfall totals ranging from 2 to 10 inches were reported.
But those rains may have come too late to provide a lot of help for many crops. For corn, there are reports of small ears or ears that are not filled out to the tip. It is possible the recent rains may have helped bean plants fill pods. Farmers have been worried about a lack of August rain, which is important for the soybean crop.
While the specific conditions are different in Southwest Iowa, the variability is similar, according to Aaron Saeugling, an Iowa State University Extension crop specialist for that area.
“We have a little bit of everything,” Saeugling says. “We have pockets that are extremely dry.”
He says silage is being chopped in his area and the crop is moving quickly toward harvest, though there are some questions about whether the dry conditions are leading the crop to die earlier than it should. He says, generally speaking, the crops look better in the bottom tier of counties in the state and also toward south central Iowa.
Meanwhile, Mueller has been watching his own fields. He had some corn being grown for silage that is being harvested. He also had some broken off by the storm that he hoped might at least make silage, but it didn’t. And he has some corn that is standing well.
“I’ve farmed for 26 years,” he says. “This will be the first harvest where it’s just not fun.”
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