Farmers enjoy early harvest

    A local crop specialist says the crop yield has been fair and that the harvest has been great. Jim Fawcett, an Iowa State University crop specialist who works in Johnson County, remarked that yields have been especially good for north central and northwestern Iowa.

    ?In general, the northern part of the state has done better than the southern,? he said.

    Fawcett said farms south of I-80 were not nearly as good as those north of it. He said Washington County had decent yields, but that counties farther south did not do well at all. He said their yields were down because of the immense amount of rain that fell in the late spring and early summer.

    The soybean disease known as sudden death syndrome (SDS) was very bad in southeast Iowa this year, reported Fawcett. He said it was partly responsible for the low yields in the central and southern portions of Washington County. The SDS fungus attacks beans in April and May, right after they have been planted. April was very warm this year, which allowed farmers to get into their fields earlier than normal, said Fawcett. However, May was cold and wet, which are the conditions the fungus thrives in.

    Farmers who delayed planting their beans were less likely to suffer from the fungus. Fawcett said that the research farm he works with waited until late May to plant beans, and it was not affected much by SDS. Beans that were planted in April were subjected to that cold spell in early May, and were the ones that contracted the fungus. 

    Not only did the crops have to battle SDS, they had rainy weather to deal with for much of the summer. 

    ?I think it was one of rainiest summers on record,? said Fawcett. ?We had three to four times the amount of rainfall in June that we normally have. We lost a lot of nitrogen from the soil.?

For the full story, see the Nov. 2 edition of The Washington Evening Journal