Soybean Harvest Moving Right Along

By Don Molino, The Voice of Louisiana Agriculture Radio Network

According to LSU AgCenter Extension Service Soybean Specialist Dr. Todd Spivey at the Dean Lee Research Station just south of Alexandria, a lot of the beans that have already been harvested this season are showing high damages at the elevator.  That includes a fair amount of pod and stem blight and even red-banded stink bugs are causing anywhere from 10 to 40 percent damage at the elevator.

“The more we distance ourselves from Hurricane Harvey that damage is decreasing to the point now that most growers may be averaging anywhere from two to five percent damage when they take their beans to the elevator. So that’s a really good sign for us,” said Spivey.

And the recent spell of pretty good weather across Louisiana soybean fields has been really good for growers to “grind through this harvest and get beans out of the field,” according to Spivey. “And with the predicted weather for the next week or so, probably within a couple of weeks we should be about 90-percent harvested across the state.”

Spivey also reports growers are really hitting the fields hard and before too much longer “we’ll be completely out of the field.”