Warm, dry fall days push area harvest

Warm, dry weather has helped farmers make considerable progress with the fall harvest in the past 10 days. While the first week of October brought 1.52 inches of rain, just 3 hundredths of an inch has fallen since.
Almost one-quarter of the soybean acreage was harvested in Minnesota during the week ending Oct. 16, according to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Eighty-seven percent of the soybean acreage has now been harvested, slightly ahead of average but one week behind last year.
There were 5.3 days suitable for fieldwork, the most days suitable since the first week of August. While the drier weather allowed harvest in most areas, there were reports of fields or spots in fields still too wet to harvest.
With almost all of Minnesota’s corn acreage mature, 31 percent of corn for grain was harvested, 6 days behind the five-year average and 5 days behind last year. Corn moisture content of grain at harvest was 19 percent. Corn condition rated 86 percent good to excellent, up 1 percentage point from last week. Virtually all of the corn for silage acreage had been harvested...
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