As harvest kicked into high gear across Illinois, growers are seeing how yields could vary greatly thanks to Mother Nature’s wet imprint left at the start of the growing season.

According to the most recent NASS report released Sept. 21, just 52 percent of the state’s corn and 54 percent of the state’s soybean crops were rated at either good or excellent. A total of 16 percent and 17 percent, respectively, were rated as poor or very poor, something farmers expected based mainly on the wet spring in most parts of Illinois.

"Those early-summer rains will push our overall corn yield down from the last couple of years, because we could not replant those areas," explained LaSalle County grower Doug Stockley. "We did have a chance to replant some of the drowned soybeans, which now will be harvested at the end of the season. The soybeans have pods, and we’ll see if it was worth our efforts spending the time and money to replant."

Corn harvest overall came in at 13 percent through the third week of September, compared to the state’s five-year average of 22 percent. Soybean harvesting was at 3 percent, down just 1 percent for the year.

While precipitation for the previous week was higher than normal, at a statewide average of 1.23 inches, the rain wasn’t so excessive as to interrupt harvest plans for most growers. Temperatures for the period averaged 68.1 degrees, nearly 3 degrees above normal for the same time period.

A big jump occurred in the level of coloring soybeans, with the crop statewide at 80 percent, an increase of about 18 percent from the prior week, according to the NASS report.

As usual, most of the early harvest activity has been concentrated in the southern and central parts of the state, with 21 percent of southern growers already having collected their corn while central growers were at 25 percent complete with their corn harvest.