Central Iowa Times

After drought and damage from the derecho, Iowa farmer's are having a difficult year. 

“The crops out in west-central Iowa are looking a little rough,” Iowa State Extension field agronomist Mike Witt told KMA Land. “The drought has not been very kind to a lot of the crops going on out there and the derecho didn’t help. There is a lot of droughty corn and drought damaged soybeans right now.”

Many of the crops, such as corn and soybeans, have matured at a much faster rate than normal. 

“I was in the field just the other day, took a moisture on a corn sample, and it was already at 27% moisture. That’s pretty far along for where we are supposed to be at this time of year. There is going to be a lot of poor-quality corn and soybeans that are going to be coming out of west-central Iowa this year," Witt told KMA Land.

This might require some farmers in west-central Iowa to change their normal way of doing things. 

“If we are going forward with a lot of downed corn, which is a lot of the area out in west-central Iowa, there’s a lot of damage from the windstorm because the drought made the stalks not exactly the best to begin with and then they got blown over,” Witt told KMA Land. “That means it will be a lot slower harvest that will occur. Farmers will have to take into account that they might have to harvest one way and other things like that. They need to be prepared for the stress of that situation.”