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Farmers are optimistic heading into harvest
US corn and soybean harvests will need to be a near-record to meet demand, and just ahead of harvest, yield estimates around the Corn Belt vary.
Central Illinois farmer Rob Schaffer says as long as Mother Nature cooperates, he expects harvest to start in about 3 weeks, “McLean and Woodford will have good yields. The state of Illinois should have good yields, across the board. I don’t know if they’ll be records, but they will be good.”
John Linder an Ohio corn farmer and president of the National Corn Growers Association says parts of the Ohio crop look pretty impressive, “NASS, at one point, put Ohio’s corn yield as the same as Iowa – that doesn’t happen very often, so, Ohio does have a crop. We did take it a little on the chin, we got some heat, the rain stopped. We were getting regular rains, that’s how you get a good crop.”
However, Iowa farmer Chris Edgington, 1st vice president of the National Corn Growers Association says he’s heard corn yields in Iowa will be all over the place,” Somebody made a comment yesterday, that, you know, they’re hearing 50-bushel swings. I think we’ll see 100-bushel swings in some fields, at least in northern Iowa, where the moisture’s been very spotty and hit and miss.”
Brownfield’s Cyndi Young, Meghan Grebner, Amie Simpson, Rhiannon Branch, and Will Robinson have been on the ground in Decatur for the 2021 Farm Progress Show. Follow their coverage here.
