Minnesota farmers have made quick work of their soybean harvest as most are completed and moving onto corn across the state. A warm and dry fall allowed growers to put the pedal to the metal and wrapped up harvest without much interruption. According to the USDA’s weekly crop report released on Oct. 21, less than five percent of soybeans remain unharvested, which is 11 days ahead of last year and two weeks ahead of the five-year average.
Yield results were a mixed bag all across the state. Some farms reported their best crop ever to some reporting their worst; other were somewhere in between. The one consistent from everyone was that the harvest went quickly, as crops dried up in a hurry.
“It got dry and dry fast,” said Brad Hovel, Minnesota Soybean Growers Association (MSGA) director from Goodhue County.
For MSGA President Darin Johnson and many of his colleagues in southern Minnesota, the 2024 growing season was bookended by extremes: Historic downpours in May and June and the driest fall in more than 150 years, making his 2024 harvest one of the quickest he can remember.
“It’s just unbelievable for us down here,” he said. “It is so dry and moisture levels are very low. It’s just been one of those years.”
Down in south-central Minnesota, MSGA Vice President Ryan Mackenthun was enthusiastic about the harvest conditions, but a little less excited about how his crop yielded.
“Way too wet during the growing season and way too dry during the fill stage. It was certainly not one of my best crops,” said Mackenthun, who farms near Brownton. “We had 14 inches of rain in 10 days at one point and in the end we probably lost 10-15% of our fields due to drown out.”
In west-central Minnesota, the dry fall allowed for growers such as Wilkin County’s Jeremy Tischer to wrap up soybeans before the start of the sugar beet campaign.
“Around mid-August I was getting worried if it would ever quit raining, but it did and it hasn’t rained since then,” said Tischer, an MSGA director who farms between Breckenridge and Foxhome. “We combined for six days straight, took a day off and finished them up the next day on the last day of September.”
Not only did Tischer enjoy the harvest conditions, but he was quite pleased with how his soybeans yielded as well.
“It was near record for us,” he said. “I think it could have been a record had the soybeans not finished so fast, but the last month and a half was so hot, dry and windy they never got the chance to add that extra bushel or two.”
Farther north on the Pennington-Red Lake County line, MSGA Secretary Kyle Jore had some concerns on how his soybeans may yield because of the excessive moisture earlier in the year, but he notes everything turned out OK.
“It was an average crop, maybe slightly below but that’s just because we had a few spots that didn’t get planted,” Jore said, “but other than that it was on par with other years.”
Now that harvest is wrapping up, Jore and many other farmers are eyeing the markets and making purchasing plans already for next year’s crop.
“It’s a little bit frustrating because usually when the markets are down, the inputs costs such as fertilizer follow,” Jore said, “But we haven’t seen that yet, so we have difficult decisions to make on whether or not we purchase early or hold off hoping things get better.”
Since he’s a few weeks ahead of schedule, Mackenthun is using the extra time to “treat” family members to some Halloween fun.
“We always take Halloween off to go trick-or-treating with the kids,” he said, “but this year I might have enough time to put a costume together!”
