Just a little over a month ago, there wasn’t a lot of harvest progress to report in southwest Michigan. But a lot has changed, according to Christian Pellatz, a Field Sales Representative with Channel Seed.
“We have had some late precipitation creating some wetter conditions for harvest, but ultimately we’ve had some pretty good running windows for harvest,” he said. “Soybeans were very dry to start. We got some rains midway through soybean harvest that we were able to get a few more points back into the crop there, so seeing a few more point increase from the 8 to 9% that we were seeing got that up to about 11 or 12 average moisture I’d say. You know some corn has been holding on to some moisture trying to shut that plant down in those droughty conditions. Obviously, they were through a lot of stressful situations so getting those to dry down has been a little bit tough in the corn crop.”
In the final Channel Seed harvest update of the season, Pellatz says storms recently caused some stalk lodging, but farmers were able to pick those ears up. Yields have been better than expected when the crop was going through drought conditions this season.
“In dry conditions I’d say expectations were mid 30’s to low 40’s and we saw plenty of soybean harvest coming off anywhere from a 50 to low 60’s as an average in some spots, so much better than expectations there. Corn, on some real dry ground that tends to struggle, growers were expecting maybe 150, 160 (bpa) we saw 180, 190 in spots. On some irrigated ground we had an average of 260 bushels on some fields there, which was very good. That includes the dry land corners, and in the middle we were seeing over 300.”
Pellatz told MAT worried growers largely have become more positive as those yield numbers have materialized. The window now to continue harvest is fairly wide open. With approximately a third of the corn finished in southwest Michigan, he expects another two to three weeks is needed to get close to wrapping up harvest. Hear more in the full MAT and Channel Seed harvest update:
