11/13/2009

It's still a bumper crop, for the most part, but farmers sure would like to get it in the bin.

So much so that many are willing to take a dock on prices simply because moisture levels are a touch higher than elevators want.

Persistent rains this fall, in addition to hard-to-swallow memories of crop-leveling winds a year ago, are driving some farmers to rush the harvest.

Despite rains Monday, or perhaps in spite of them, farmers in the Rush Center area were back in the fields Tuesday, harvesting corn.

One farmer wouldn't even stop for the rain Monday, said Richard Harman, manager of Mid State Farmers Co-op in Rush Center.

"We're picking corn," he said Tuesday.

Drizzle on Wednesday brought the harvest to a halt once again.

The Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, issued its monthly harvest estimate Tuesday.

Again, the outlook is good.

Record corn and soybean harvests are expected. KASS also is forecasting record soybean and grain sorghum yields.

The corn harvest this year is expected to be 561.2 million bushels, more than 50 million bushels higher than a year ago. Yields are expected to hit 145 million bushels, and in some cases, farmers are seeing nearly those levels in dryland fields.

Many farmers just now are starting to cut irrigated corn, which typically has higher yields.

While grain sorghum production is expected to be down this year, amounting to 207.5 million bushels, that's primarily a result of fewer acres being planted.

Per acre yields, however, are forecast at 83 bushels per acre, a new record.

The soybean harvest should total 156.95 million bushels, 43 bushels per acre, new records on both counts.

Crop forecasts are based on conditions as of the first of the month, and, based on scattered reports, there might be weaknesses in the crop because of unusually cool weather in September and October -- the coldest October ever in the history of the Goodland National Weather Service -- and continued rains that are starting to reduce test weights on some grain sorghum fields.

Moisture levels remain higher than desired, Harmon said.

Milo fields in Mid State's western region are pretty well cut out, he said, while the harvest is getting started in earnest in the east.

Unlike many locations, the harvest for Mid State generally starts in the west and then spreads east. The cooperative has elevators stretching from Alexander on the west to Timken on the east.

That's why Harmon is unsure what yields ultimately will do.

"We've got some really good but some pretty poor," he said of the milo that has been cut.

It was the same story for dryland corn.

"There was some good and some not so good," he said.

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