No Downtime for Farmers: Dry Weather Fuels Record Harvest Pace

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(Soybean Harvest, PC: Kailey Foster)

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A dry harvest season has not only allowed farmers the opportunity to get into the fields early, but also to move at what some describe as a record pace.

“It’s been extremely dry. So guys are really moving quickly this year, and probably one of the faster harvests I’ve been a part of here,” shares Eric Wuthrich, manager of Farmers Grain. “We’ve had one rain day since September 8, and that was half a day. The American farmer, you can’t ever underestimate them. It could rain a half inch, and they’ll be in the field in the afternoon, but I think we just have to be more prepared for not having any downtime.”

If farmers have downtime, Bayer Technical Agronomist Lance Tarchione says it’s mainly because of equipment breakdowns.

“Farmers will will be done, perhaps record early at the at the rate we’re going and things are incredibly dry, so not going to have to dry a lot of corn from here on out, and soybeans are way drier than you want them to be, which has become a normal thing here in recent years, it seems,” says Teachione. “But it’s going fast. You can almost cut soybeans around the clock these days with as dry as things are.”

At the pace harvest is progressing, local experts predict most farmers will wrap up around Halloween.

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