Warm temperatures and dry weather earlier this month allowed some farmers in southern Iowa to get an early start to the harvest season.
Terry Basol, a field agronomist in north central Iowa and field specialist for Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, tells RadioOnTheGo News fall harvest in his area is about to begin as crops have reached the maturity stage.
“Corn is progressing along nicely. The warm temperatures here that we had has definitely helped progress that milk line down. You can kind of tell by looking at everything that everything is moving along. Soybeans, you know, week and a half, two weeks ago, they were still kind of green. And that has definitely changed around here where we’ve got leaves that are starting to drop, senescence happening. So, I would suspect within a week we’re probably going to see some combines running in some soybean fields here.”
Basol says in addition to the warm weather, the threat of southern rust in the corn crop has led to some early harvest in Iowa.
“There are portions of the state of Iowa that they have started harvesting because of the disease presence and the pressure that it was and it basically shut the plant down and pushed it to maturity kind of a thing. So, there are some corn fields that have already been harvested in the state.”
According to Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, southern rust overtakes the surface of the leaf in a corn plant and creates reddish-orange patches. This, in turn, blocks photosynthesis, which weakens the plant and can reduce yields.
