Corn yields up in county

Jackson County’s corn crop in 2023 has seen a significant improvement over the 2022 harvest, although the same might not be said for soybeans, even though grain coming into the local silos is proving to be of better quality than what the state of Kansas is seeing as a whole this year.

That’s according to Dennis Holliday, agronomy manager at Jackson Farmers in Holton, who noted that this year’s corn crop in the county has yielded anywhere from 170 to 200 bushels per acre, an improvement over last year’s harvest in the 140-bushel range.

“Corn’s really good this year overall,” Holliday said of this year’s harvest. “There are some fields that are shorter than that, and there are some fields that are probably a little better than that… Overall, most of the guys have been happy with the corn.”

Meadowlark Extension District agent David Hallauer agreed.

“I think the corn crop handled some tough stretches of weather and then disease pressure really well, resulting in some excellent yields,” Hallauer said. “There was variability, but not like I might have expected.”

On the soybean side, the yields are showing an improvement over last year’s crop, but not much, mainly because of the dry weather the region has experienced in recent weeks.

“It’s probably less than the guys were anticipating at the end of July,” Holliday said of the soybean harvest. “Some of them were looking for bumper crops on beans, then the heat and the dry weather came in August, and by now, I’d say we’re looking at 40 to 60 bushels for an average.”

That average, he said, is about “five or 10” bushels below last year’s average crop in the county, which benefitted from some late rains.

“This year, I’d say the beans are probably off,” Holliday added. “There’s a lot of small beans, and that’s an indicator of the heat and the dry weather.”

Hallauer had a little different outlook on soybeans, however.

“Soybeans have performed surprisingly well,” he said. “There’s certainly more yield variability than corn, but they really came through our late season stressors well, and yields have been pretty respectable across the board.”

Compared to what the state as a whole has been seeing — according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) office in Manhattan — that appears to be the case.

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