Bumper corn crop noted in this year's fall harvest

This year’s corn harvest in Jackson County, according to Dennis Holliday, agronomy manager at Jackson Farmers in Holton, is “one of the best we’ve ever had, I think, on average,” while the soybean harvest is also comparable to last year’s harvest.

Holliday said he and his crew at the Jackson Farmers elevator have been seeing corn coming in at yields of more than 200 bushels per acre, better than last year’s reported per-acre averages of 170 to 200 bushels.

“I’m not sure what the average is going to be overall, but there’s multiple people who have told me that they’ve been raising some 200-plus bushel corn,” Holliday said. “Overall, it’s probably going to be better than last year.”

The county’s soybean harvest this year may not be “the best ever beans, by any means,” as Holliday put it, but it holds up against last year’s average, which ranged from 40 to 60 bushels per acre.

“We’ve had some 50-to-60-plus bushel beans, but there’s quite a few that are down in the 40s. It just kind of depends on where you are when the rain comes in,” he said. “Overall, I think the beans are better than they were last year, even if they might not be the best bean crop, like the corn crop has been.”

Much of the success of this year’s crops could be attributed to a rainy spring, Holliday noted, and while rain has made itself scarce over the past three months, the relatively dry weather has been good for the corn harvest, if not for the soybeans.

“It certainly helped the corn when the harvest was getting started,” he said. “The beans were still looking good, but we did have a little bit of dry weather there in August, and it always takes a little bit of moisture in August for beans to really produce well.”

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the entire county has been covered by “moderate drought” conditions since earlier this month, following “abnormally dry” conditions that began in parts of the county in late July and have covered the entire county since the start of September. Prior to that, no drought conditions were noted in the county between the end of May and the end of July, thanks to a significant amount of rain received in late May.

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