Iowa’s corn harvest is eight days behind last year and 11 days behind the five-year average. Across the state, 43% of corn has been harvested for grain and southeast Iowa farms are a bit ahead of that rate with 59% harvested.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, challenging field conditions with the first accumulating snowfall left only 4.4 days suitable for fieldwork last week. Local field agronomist Rebecca Vittetoe says in general moisture in corn is another hurdle this difficult harvest, “Our crops have been a lot wetter taking them out of the fields, especially the corn. I’ve maybe heard of a few people not having to dry corn, but a lot of people it’s around that maybe 20% to 25%, some even higher just depending upon when it was planted and all that. So we’ve been having a lot of wet corn. And you know, if we’re going to want to store it through the winter we like to get it drier than that, so this isn’t going to help an in-field drying at all. So, doing what you can to get it dry. Another option is to get the grain cooled and that can also help to expand its shelf-life as well.” Iowa’s corn is rated at 13% excellent, 54% good, 25% fair, and 8% poor to very poor.

Soybean harvest is about a week behind average with 80% done so far. In southeast Iowa, 65% of soybeans have been harvested.