Long corn harvest winding down

The long corn harvest isn’t over yet, but an end is in sight for Iowa and Nebraska farmers.

A report released Monday by the National Agricultural Statistics Service showed progress made in the past week as farmers worked to get corn out of their fields.

As of Sunday, farmers in Nebraska had harvested 88 percent of cornfields, up from 78 percent last Monday. In Iowa, they had harvested 94 percent, up from 87 percent Nov. 29.

Farmers have suffered from a “triple whammy” of large crop size, slow drying conditions and weather that has made it difficult to harvest the corn, said Scott Keller, agricultural statistician for the Nebraska field office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Luckily for farmers, most of the heavy snowfall forecast for this week is expected to fall in southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa, where farmers are closer than farmers in other parts of Nebraska to having all of their corn out of their fields.

It’s the latest corn harvest in Nebraska since 1972, Keller said. But there aren’t recent statistics to compare with in either Nebraska or Iowa because the agency usually doesn’t have to track corn harvest this late in the year. Typically, most of the harvest is finished already.

Most of the soybean harvest is finished, so the agency isn’t tracking that crop weekly.

Jon Holzfaster, a Paxton, Neb., farmer, said he still has 20 percent of his corn crop left to harvest.

“Most years, we’re usually wrapped up by Thanksgiving,” Holzfaster said. “This year, we’re really going to have to push to get done by Christmas.”

More precipitation than usual has kept the moisture level in the corn too high. That’s left farmers either harvesting the corn and drying it before putting it in storage or just waiting for it to dry on its own.

Even farmers with access to dryers are slowed considerably by the process.

“It only dries about a third as fast as we can pick it,” said Holzfaster.

Recent snowfall hasn’t helped things. At Holzfaster’s farm about 30 miles west of North Platte, 2 to 3 inches of dry snow Sunday were enough to keep him out of the fields for most of Monday. If heavy wet snow were to fall this week, the harvest would suffer even more.

Gene Alt, a retired farmer near Audubon, Iowa, has been working to help his two brothers and son harvest their corn all autumn.

“We finally finished Saturday morning,” said Alt. “I was ready for the break, that’s for sure.”

Higher yields will help farmers offset increased fuel costs incurred drying grain, said Holzfaster. That’s a silver lining, he said, but all he really wants for Christmas is an end to the harvest.

“There’s nothing like that feeling of finishing up the last field and being done for the year,” Holzfaster said.

Contact the writer:

444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com

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