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Dry June, August took toll on soybean yields in Northeast Nebraska

Northeast Nebraska farmer Greg Anderson says soybean yields have been extremely variable.

“It kind of depends on where the rain fell and the timeliness of that rain.”

He tells Brownfield at one point in late July he was expecting a bumper crop but looks were deceiving. “When you looked at that heavily-podded field from the road,  looks like that will be 70 or 80 bushels per acre.  But when you get in there and walk around, the top six inches do have pods, but maybe just one or two beans in the top part of the plant and they’re smaller than they should be.”

Anderson says that’s partly due to the odd weather pattern starting with drought after planting, followed by a wet July and dryness again in mid-August. “We go the vegetative growth, and that helped getting the plant looking nice.  By the first of August, we always think “here we go, this is make or break.”  The first 10 days looked great, but it really flipped flopped again and we experienced conditions like we did in early June.”

He says soybean harvest about half over and hopes that some moisture this week helps improve extremely dry conditions.