The 2019 harvest grinds on, in what has been one of the latest and slowest many farmers in the region can ever remember. Elk Point, South Dakota farmer Doug Hanson says they’re normally done with soybean harvest by now, but combined the last field just yesterday.
He says some of the harvest delays were tied to the lagging maturity of the soybeans after a late planting season. However, Hanson says that crop did make it across the finish line.
Hanson says soybean yields are running just five bushels per acre below his farm averages, which is a victory considering the late planting date.
He says they took prevented plant on 70-percent of their normal acres, and what did get planted was mostly soybeans.
USDA’s crop progress report showed as of Sunday, soybean harvest in South Dakota was 58-percent complete verses the five-year average of 90-percent. Only 14-percent of the corn had been harvested compared to the norm of 46-percent.
