The crop progress that led to mid-November’s yield projections for northeast Indiana’s major field crops by the U.S. Department of Agriculture may come as a relief for some of the region’s farmers, given the weather they had experienced earlier in the growing season.
Based on yield data gathered with much of this year’s harvest completed, USDA’s preliminary district estimate released Nov. 13 projects northeast Indiana will harvest 480,000 acres of the 505,000 it planted in corn, and see an average yield of 169 bushels per acre leading to total production of 81 million bushels of the crop.
The department projected the region would harvest 689,000 acres of the 690,000 it had planted in soybeans, and see an average yield of 52.5 bushels per acre leading to total production of 36.15 million bushels of the crop.
Northeast Indiana’s projected corn yield was below the state’s projected average corn yield of 179 bushels per acre, and the region’s projected soybean yield was below the state’s projected average yield of 55 bushels per acre.
If northeast Indiana’s average corn yield came in at 169 bushels per acre as expected this year, it would be above last year’s 160 bushels per acre average for the region.
This year’s projected soybean yield of 52.5 bushels per acre would be below last year’s 56.2 bushels per acre.
In the northern part of the state, 79 percent of the corn had been harvested and 93 percent of the soybeans had been harvested, according to a weekly Crop Progress and Condition Report released for Indiana by the USDA the same day as its preliminary district estimate.
For both crops, the yields Allen County farmers were getting this harvest season were average or close enough to it that “farmers are probably in a decent mood; things are going alright,” said James Wolff, an agricultural and natural resources educator at the local office of Purdue University’s Cooperative Extension Service.
Earlier in the growing season, “we were really looking at anticipating some yield reduction or some issues, as we had a lot of corn that had too much water on it - a lot of spots in the fields that didn’t grow and had to be replanted. And we saw some of that with the soybeans as well,” he said.
The harvest has gone a little slower lately because of wet weather, but in most cases the impact has not been enough to put the area behind schedule, he said.
Most of the county’s farmers finished combining their soybeans or just had a scattered field or two left to harvest, and they were getting close to finishing their corn if they weren’t already done with it as of Nov. 14, Wolff said.
The condition of the crops has been good. It has taken a little longer than usual to get the corn to the desired moisture level of around 15 percent, but the drying of the crop has gone better than anticipated, he said.