Harvest wrapping up in southeast Nebraska, bean harvest down

PLYMOUTH - One of the busiest times of the year for Nebraska’s biggest industry is coming to an end.

Harvest is wrapping up around the state, including southeast Nebraska. Gary Lytle is the location manager at the Plymouth Farmers Cooperative and says while wet corn went well, farmers saw lower yields in soy beans.

“Soy beans have probably been a little disappointing,” Lytle said. “Irrigated beans were off a little bit which was expected because of the drought, but it’s been off this year.”

Much of Nebraska found themselves in several droughts during the summer and not many thunderstorms with heavy rain made their way into southeast Nebraska. Lytle says this allowed farmers to get a jump on dry land harvest ahead of schedule.

“I’d say we were a couple weeks earlier than normal,” Lytle said. “Most guys get geared up after the Cornhusker Days and we were already going a week to ten days before that.”

Lytle says some of the disappointing harvest results southeast Nebraska farmers experienced can by chalked up as dumb luck.

“25 miles to the south of us, the crops are really good,” Lytle said. “There were some showers from July-August that those guys got, up here we got 10-20 hundredths. We were right on the edge of having a really good crop.”