Photo: Sue Danielson
(Undated) -- Iowa farmers are 59-percent finished with this year's corn harvest. This week's Crop Progress and Condition report also says Iowa's soybean harvest is 88-percent complete. The harvest in northwest Iowa is outpacing harvest activity in other parts of the state The corn harvest is one day ahead of last year and eight days ahead of the average. The soybean harvest is 11 days ahead of the average.
“Soybean harvest is beginning to wrap up and Iowa farmers and are making big strides toward finishing corn harvest,” said Secretary MIke Naig. “While the persistently dry conditions have helped push harvest progress along, moderate drought continues to spread statewide and is now covering nearly half of Iowa." Nearly all of Iowa's corn crop has reached maturity.
In the weekly crop report statement, State Climatologist Justin Glison stated: An unseasonably cool and dry weather pattern took hold over the Midwest through most of the reporting period with negative temperature departures of up to seven degrees across portions of Iowa; the statewide average temperature was 45.7 degrees, 3.8 degrees below normal. While several eastern Iowa stations reported trace amounts of rainfall, only a few National Weather Service co-op stations observed measurable totals. Overall, statewide precipitation deficits were on the order of 0.40 inch to 0.60 inch.