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Hot, dry weather stalling soybean progress

The soybean crop is made in August, but a climatologist says the weather this month could make it an uphill battle to the finish line.

Crop conditions have mostly held steady across the Midwest recently, but Al Dutcher with UNL said that could change.

He tells Brownfield the Eastern Corn Belt could have above normal precipitation.

“Their bigger issue is going to be disease, heavy precipatation, flodding – those types of situations – potentially, some severe weather,” Dutcher said.

But, he said, the Western Corn Belt is a different story with hot and dry conditions through the end of the month.

“If we go two more weeks with this type of temuratures and lack of precipatation, yeah, it’s going to start to add up real big,” he said. “Especially with night time tempuratures in the 70s, we’re going through rapid grain fill, we’re not respiring properly at night. And, if we move through the grain fill stage too fast, we tend to get lighter test weights and we tend to see yield reductions that way.”

Dutcher said rain events will likely be spotty at best.

Brownfield interviewed Dutcher at the University of Nebraska Extension Field Day.