Glenn Smith is a farmer in western Iowa, which has had one of its hottest, driest growing seasons in a very long time. Mother Nature very stingy with rain in that part of the country this year. They have had some good open weather for harvesting. And Glenn and his family have been super busy trying to wrap up the corn and soybean harvest. And now that Job’s pretty much done. So Glenn had a couple of minutes to talk with me about this year’s harvest.
It’s remarkable Gary, the yields that we’re pulling out, given the limited rainfall we had
What kind of yields are we talking about here? soybean yields
I yeah, I would say here in western Iowa, on our farms anyway, was in the 55 to 60 area. But what’s unbelievable is our corn is running in that 250 to 260 area.
Wow. Wow, very high considering USDA is estimating the average corn yield nationally at only about 173 bushels an acre and very high considering the very dry growing season. So Glenn, how do you account for that kind of yield on those kinds of conditions?
I think first and foremost is the genetics we have and particularly on the corn. It seems like we have better staying power seems like we have better root system on our farm here in western Iowa. We’ve worked diligently towards soil health. We’ve been no tilling for almost 3637 years, and we’ve been our seventh I think this is our eighth year of cover crop. We’ll be seeding over 1000 acres of cover crop this year. So I believe the soil Hill, the tilth, the degree of mulch that we build up and the combination of bat plus genetics. We must have some tremendous root systems in this these in these plants because I’ll tell you there isn’t much in the soil whatever dropped fell. I think it got utilized.
So I guess now the big question that you and every farmer has as he or she harvests that crop, are you going to make any money at it?
Prices have have backed off as you well know. But I think we’re gonna make it up in volume.
Well that’s something Glenn Smith didn’t think would happen given a very hot dry growing season. Gary Crawford reporting for the US Department of Agriculture