Crop Watcher 10/23/09

Todd Easton Coles County October 23 2009: As Baseball legend Yogi Berra used to say “its deja vu all over again” this week as rain showers came into the area Thursday stopping harvest progress until at least this weekend. Producers started harvesting corn fields over the last weekend. Then on Monday most switched to beans and took out a very large part of that crop ahead of the rain. Soybeans were finally coming in at acceptable moisture levels this weekend with yields all over the board. If we could just get a handful of good days farmers could wrap up the bean harvest and hopefully those will come soon. Corn harvest has been on and off again all season yielding to the bean harvest when ever that has been possible. Corn moistures were still in the 20 to 25 percent range this week forcing elevators to curtail wet corn deliveries at times to catch up on drying already. I’m afraid this will be an on going inconvenience throughout corn harvesting as combine capacity has well out grown drying capacity over the last few years.