Nebraska Farmers Harvest Disappointing Crop in a Season Plagued by Drought
Nebraska Harvest 101222
Harvest results in Nebraska are understandably disappointing with some of the driest conditions during the season since the drought of 2012.
Mike Korth farms in one of the driest parts of the state and received less than 6 inches of rain since January 1. He says it isn't as dry as 2012 but close. He says, "In Nebraska the driest part of the state is right what we’re sitting it. This is what they call an exceptional drought. And there’s a pretty good chunk of red here that covers about 4 counties. "
It wasn’t just the lack of moisture, but the heat that pulled irrigated soybean yields down by 10 to 15% from normal and dryland yields were much worse. Korth says, "They’re probably down about 25% and even more on an extremely dry area its worse than that, about 50%. So it’s a little disappointing."
Irrigated corn yields are also about 10% below his APH and dryland production is a near disaster on some fields with lighter soil. Korth says, "They are probably down 50% to 60%. I mean one did not register hardly. I did another field that made in the 40s, did one in the 60s and one that did 120.
Craig Ebberson farms near Belden, Nebraska and picked up a few more rains late in the season to help dryland soybeans and irrigated won’t be far off farm averages. "We’ve got some beans that, irrigated beans are in the 70s. Some dryland beans we’ve had some in the 50s and some in the 40-range."
His dryland corn is a disaster, but irrigated corn is only off about 20-bushels from last year. Ebberson says, "Our irrigated corn we’re getting some 250s, 260s on the irrigated corn. Some of our dryland on good farms is yielding well into the 100s. Some of the dryland that we cut early for silage is pretty poor, probably 40-50 bushel corn.”
Test weights on corn are running in the upper 50s and the corn has been drying down fast with the continued warm, dry harvest weather. Ebberson says, "Hopefully we won’t have to dry any corn that’s our hope anyway.
Ebberson says with crop insurance and higher prices he’ll still have a pretty good year, but for the state 2022 will go down as one of the worst in recent memory. "I’m sure the state will be considerably lower than last year for sure. At once I thought the yields on dryland would be 50 bushels behind last year average and I think that’s probably a fairly close guess."
