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Soybean harvest delays raise quality concerns in some areas

An extension soybean agronomist suggests the time to panic about harvest delays depends on location.

Seth Naeve with the University of Minnesota says cool and wet conditions are slowing fieldwork in many areas.

“I don’t think we’ve got real big quality challenges here, but certainly in other parts of the country I think the physical quality of soybeans is really going to be impacted by the combination of all the tough weather we’ve had and then exposing those soybeans to these kind of wet conditions later in the year can be really, really detrimental.”

He tells Brownfield when the weather turns, soybeans will dry rapidly.

“We’re going to turn on a dime on this thing, it’s going to dry out, we’ll get some sunshine and then the beans will be 8 and 9 percent again. It just happens every year, it’s something we have to deal with in the Western Corn Belt.”

Naeve says the tradeoff is better quality in the west because eastern soybeans tend to hold onto moisture longer and suffer from poorer quality as harvest progresses.