ST. CLOUD -- If there is a silver lining to this summer's drought, it may be that farmers in central Minnesota were able to get to harvest sooner than usual.

Nathan Drewitz is a University of Minnesota Extension Office crops expert. He says typically the harvest doesn't really get going until early October, but this year the crops are already out for the most part...

Really, before the end of September, we were probably well over halfway done, if not really close to being done with corn silage. Grain was just starting and I had already received some reports of soybean harvest yield numbers at that point as well.

Drewitz says the drought really pushed things along...

With as much stress as we were under, the moment we that we didn't get rain and had a return of heat, it just dried 'em right on out.  So, that was really kind of the kill shot that we saw in August there. Those crops were finally just done. And, then it's just a matter of waiting for it to dry down to a moisture that we can harvest at, which didn't take very long.

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Drewitz says some farmers experienced very good yields this year while others saw production suffer due to the dry conditions.

Alfalfa was hit particularly hard with most farmers only getting two "cuttings" in when in a typical year they can get four.

 

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