Dave Walton’s family has been farming for more than 100 years, but this year the weather has kept him out of the fields.
“We had heat. We had cold. We had rain. We just came off a period where we didn’t get anything done for almost two weeks because of the rain,” Walton said.
The latest numbers show farmers have only harvested 35 percent of the soybean crops. The Iowa Soybean Association said farmers haven’t been this far behind in their harvest since 1985.
Walton is usually done harvesting by mid-October, but this year he’s only half way through.
Now that the fields are dry, it’s a race to get the crops harvested before they get damaged.
“The pods can shatter. They’ll open up they’ll drop beans before the combine even gets there,” Walton said. “Through the harvesting operation the combine, hits those beans and they can shatter and fly off. We lose anywhere from one to five bushels an acre.”
That can add up to a $50 loss per acre — a cost Iowa can’t afford.
“When the farmers struggle the whole state struggles,” Walton said. “We’re seeing that right now with the budget deficit in the state house.”
On Thursday Iowa’s Department of Management scaled back state revenue projections for the fiscal year by $133 million dollars. They attributed part of that to the economic issues facing farmers, which keep the state from collecting more taxes.
Even though this year’s soybean crop is projected to fall short of last year’s 571 million bushels, Walton sees hope in the soybean farmer’s future.
“It’s one of the most important grain crops in Iowa,” he said. “I think this is kind of the low point — last year, this year and maybe next year — but there’s definitely hope on the horizon.”
