“Variable.” That term has been used to describe Indiana corn and soybeans for several years now, but it may not be truer than it is this year. It’s a year of the “haves” and the “have nots”: who got timely rains and who didn’t.
“It’s a 50/50 split of guys that say, ‘Hey, I’m going to have the best bean crop of my life,’ or, ‘This may be the worst bean crop I’ve had in the last 10 or 15 years,’” explained southern Indiana farmer C.J. Fleenor when he spoke to Hoosier Ag Today earlier this week.
HAT spoke with Tippecanoe County farmer Kevin Underwood on Tuesday. He hasn’t started harvest quite yet.
“We were fortunate in this very narrow band of our part of the world that actually received between an inch and a little over two inches of rain over the weekend that delayed the Purdue football game. But we had gotten actually pretty good rain through the month of August, and so as a result, things are actually maturing as they should, and they’re not just dying.”
Underwood says his wife had been worried about the lack of rain ever since May. And it led to what he says was their “mantra” for this year.
“There were so many areas that were having issues with excessive rain and not being able to get planted, or trying to replant in spots and all these kinds of things, and we had not up to that point. She’s like, ‘Well, we need to pray for rain.’ I was like, ‘We need to pray for enough.’ And that is likely the best mantra, I think, we’ve had all summer long. Just give us enough. And literally, every time we’ve gotten really, really dry, we’ve gotten enough, and I think we’re probably going to be sitting on a pretty darn good crop.”
Underwood says he’ll get harvest underway in the next week to 10 days.
