| With an eye to a darkly clouded sky, Jon Ryan swung into the seat of his combine Tuesday and rumbled through his
cornfield near Cokato, Minn., collecting yellow kernels from cobs stripped
clean.
As it is for him and other farmers every season, Ryan vied with the
fickleness of nature to plant, cultivate and, now, harvest soybeans and
corn, Minnesota's top crops.
A few days ago he finished harvesting all 400 acres of his soybeans
after bouts of rain and heavy dew that stalled his progress. Now he's
freed to combine his corn steadily, under sun and stars, whether rain or
snow falls.
He looked back over a growing season of extremes, from heavy spring
rains that delayed planting to the battering hail that bruised his crops
in midsummer. Then came hot, dry days in August that stressed corn as it
tasseled. Tuesday, Ryan said he was relieved, though certainly not elated,
that his crops managed at least an average yield this year.
Across Minnesota, yields are down for soybeans, corn and wheat from the
bountiful harvests of the last few years.
The yields are spotty and mixed, said Gene Hugoson, Minnesota's
agriculture commissioner, on Tuesday. Hugoson, who farms 600 acres of
soybeans in Martin County, has seen his own yields range from 60 bushels
an acre to a measly 10 bushels an acre, sometimes in the same field, he
said.
"It's better than we expected but less than we hoped," Ryan
said. "We've been used to better crops the last few years. With the
prices the way they are, you hoped for more bushels to make up for the
prices."
Tuesday he took a break in the warm, homey kitchen that his wife, Jane,
has decorated in a blue and white Dutch theme. Ryan, 39, checked a
computer screen on a satellite information system broadcast from Nebraska.
He uses the satellite broadcast to stay tuned in to the latest crop
prices, weather and farm information.
The Data Transmission Network out of Omaha carried dismal news. Prices
in Cokato had hit a low they had reached only once before in the past 13
years, the furthest back prices were available to him.
Soybeans, which in recent years sold for about $6 a bushel at harvest,
had sunk to $3.78 a bushel Tuesday in Cokato. Corn was down to $1.54 a
bushel, considerably below the cost of production.
Government payments, which make up the difference between those market
prices and a minimum guaranteed price, would help some, but not much, Ryan
said.
Input costs this year for farmers were higher than usual, from the
fertilizer he applied last spring to the LP gas that runs his corn dryer
now. Tuesday he unloaded a truckload of newly harvested corn into a dryer,
which heats the corn and sucks the moisture out so it can be stored
without fear of sprouting.
Moister corn and soybean crops this year are boosting drying costs for
farmers.
The Minnesota corn harvest is lagging significantly behind the
five-year average, with 33 percent of the harvest complete, compared with
83 percent this time last year, according to state statistics.
But as farmers finish their soybean harvests, they should be able to
catch up on the corn, said Michael Hunst, state agricultural statistician.
In south-central Minnesota, farmers are still trying to finish soybean
harvests this week. In recent weeks they could barely string together a
day or two without rain, heavy dew or frost hampering their progress.
"It's just been a struggle getting those beans out," said
Kent Thiesse, a University of Minnesota extension educator in Blue Earth
County. "The feeling is that they are up against a time clock."
Farmers in Blue Earth, Watonwan, Waseca, Faribault, Martin, Freeborn
and Jackson counties have 15 to 20 percent of their soybeans left in the
fields, Thiesse said. If snow piles up, as it did on Halloween in 1991, it
will be difficult to harvest those beans -- far harder than getting out
the corn in snow, he said.
Nationwide, soybean production is forecast at a record high of 2.91
billion bushels for this year, Hunst said. But harvested acres in beans
are down in Minnesota, with a 12 percent decline expected, at 259 million
bushels.
Last year Minnesota farmers harvested a record 293 million bushels of
soybeans. Yields dropped from 41
bushels per acre last year to 37
per acre forecast for this year, Hunst said.
Minnesota corn production this year is forecast at 800
million bushels, a 16 percent decline from last year, Hunst said. Yields
have fallen from 145
bushels to 129
bushels per acre, he said.
Because many fields were so wet that farmers couldn't get into them for
spring planting, some farmers switched to a variety of corn that has
shorter growing cycles but also lower yields, he said.
The record for corn production was set in 1998, when farmers harvested
more than a billion bushels.
The spring wheat harvest is complete in Minnesota, and sugar beets are
wrapping up, with yields and production down for both of those crops, too.
Wheat is grown mostly in west-central Minnesota and the Red River
Valley in the northwest, where land is so flat that one can see for miles
across fields that look as if they were pressed by a giant iron. Those
harvests began in August.
This year the state's farmers harvested 79.2
million bushels of spring
wheat, down 17
percent in total production. The yield dropped from 49
bushels per acre in 2000 to 44
bushels per acre this year, Hunst said.
Sugar beet production dropped from 9.2
million tons last year to 8.96
million tons forecast for this year. Beets are grown mostly around the Red
River Valley and counties in the Renville area.
Beet yields are down from 21.5
tons per acre last year to 19.6
tons per acre forecast for this year.
Last spring, much of the state had adequate or even surplus moisture.
But other areas had drought, including the central and east-central parts
of the state. By mid-August, the southern two-thirds of the state was too
dry.
Wind blew down and bent corn this summer in west-central and central
Minnesota. In many cases, the corn was able to pop back up. But farmers in
Redwood and Lyon counties, for example, have been slowed in their corn
harvest by stalks remain lodged.
Most farmers have corn and soybean yields lower than normal, and in
some cases, much lower, Thiesse said.
Corn and soybean farmers with the most significant losses may be able
to collect crop insurance indemnity payments to offset yield reductions if
they carried policies this year.
But because of the way policies are written, farmers who had yields
that were reduced by one-fifth or less are unlikely to get insurance
payments, Thiesse said. |