(Sheldon)– Final numbers are coming in for the 2023 harvest in northwest Iowa. Iowa State University Extension Crop Agronomist says there were a lot of ups and downs during the season…
“I think it was a pretty rocky growing season for a lot of us, lots of ups and downs, maybe a roller coaster would be a better description of it, but lots of highs and lows and then ending at pretty high for most growers as yields were fairly good across our northwest Iowa region, a lot higher than most people expected in our area. There are some outliers, of course, with fields that just didn’t really get the right moisture at the right time or maybe had some extreme pest pressures. But for the most part growers were very satisfied with the yields they were getting because of the rain they had received. So pretty shocking for a lot of guys but we were happy with it, you know.”
She says the growing season didn’t start out so hot, literally…
“We started out a little bit rough. Some guys didn’t get into the fields as soon as they wanted to because it took us a long time for soils to get to temperatures we needed and then we dealt with decent emergence and then we dealt with some herbicide carry over issues for quite a bit of the growing season so that really made people nervous about what our ending yields were going to look like, but overall I was really happy with it. We dealt with some late season soybean pests but corn stayed relatively healthy and stood in the fields well for guys for like their last fields getting harvested, were standing pretty well and so we were really happy to see that. So overall I think it’s a positive. We can look back and maybe see a couple of thingsto change for next year, but overall a good growing season for most of northwest Iowa.”
Ten Napel says most of the region received just enough rain to sustain crops through the season. She says samples from the first of November show significantly more moisture in the soil profile this fall than last fall. She says they will take readings again in April and that will tell them how much there is to begin the 2024 crop year.
(Courtesy Community First Broadcasting station KIWA in Sheldon)
