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Western Wisconsin farmer says crops variable but okay

A western Wisconsin farmer says there is a lot of variability in the crops this fall.

Tony Mellenthin grows corn and soybeans south of Menomonie and tells Brownfield the late season weather had an impact. “Heat and lack of moisture to finish them off has taken the top end off the corn and beans. If you talk to the guys who have done corn silage, and there’s some pretty darned good corn out there and there’s some not very good corn out there, too.”

Mellenthin says as far as corn yields are concerned, “We’ll have okay yields. It won’t be a record crop but it’s far from a disaster as well.”

And for soybeans, the late August rains helped fill pods. “They look pretty good. Not many beans have been combined yet in my area to get good harvest reports. The little bit that’s been done are early maturity beans or sand ground beans, and those yields seem to be respectable.”

Mellenthin says there were more earworms and cutworms this year, as well as a lot of soybean aphids around the R5 to R6 growth stage. 

Mellenthin is not expecting a record soybean crop, but he says the soybeans fared better than some of the corn this year.