Rain the last two weeks might be too late to be of any help to the state’s soybean and corn farmers.

Just because soybean fields are green and don’t look dry like most cornfields this year, does not mean they are productive. (Photo courtesy, Karma Metzgar)

Some soybean farmers resisted cutting their crops for silage, hoping to salvage a bigger crop out of them. University of Missouri Agronomist Bill Wiebold says rains in the last couple of weeks could help maintain the pods that are there or make seeds a little larger, but that’s about it.

“I think they’ve helped a little but not very much. What we have gone through this summer, soybean plants have flowered and flowered and flowered but not kept very many of those flowers on, and so the plants have very few pods on them and just no capacity or very little capacity to produce any additional flowers.”

Corn plants, most of which died weeks ago, now run the additional risk of fungal infection as a result of rain. Wiebold says that makes harvesting what is left as soon as possible a priority.

“Even though the yield’s not very good, every bushel that we can bring in is income. What we’ve been saying is a timely harvest, even with a poor harvest in terms of yield … is still important.”

Wiebold says the harvest of most soybeans will begin in about three weeks.