Big corn crop starting to go to elevators

By The Associated Press | Sunday, October 28, 2007

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MITCHELL — The 2007 corn harvest, which has started to arrive at grain elevators, appears to be good despite dry conditions this summer, according to Reid Jensen, president of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association.

“Because of some of the extremes in some areas, it might not be a record per-acre yield, but we have more acres this year, so we could easily surpass our total output,” said Jensen, of Burbank.

About 13 percent of the crop has been harvested so far. Eighty-two percent of the crop is mature, the Agriculture Statistics Service says.

Jon Proehl of the Dakota Plains Ag Center in Parkston said he has heard yields vary between 70-150 bushels per acre. But he said he doesn’t expect storage space to fill rapidly until a hard frost dries out the crop.

Rain this past weekend will delay the harvest somewhat, Proehl said. “The stalk is really juicy (and) still trying to feed that ear because it doesn’t know any different.”

Most of the corn that has arrived at his elevator has come from western areas, including Geddes, Platte and Winner.

“We were really wet this spring, so we were probably three weeks behind compared to out west, where they didn’t get quite the amounts of rain and so they got their crop in,” he said.

“It would help the process in drying it so they can work through the crop a little,” Proehl said.

Mike Carlson of Cargill Inc., in Emery said the elevator has handled 5 percent to 10 percent of the total amount of corn to be processed there.

Poet Biorefining’s processing equipment runs all the time. Last year, drought forced it to expand the search for corn. But this year, general manager Dean Frederickson said local yields could keep the plant busy.

“This year, the corn crop looks very good in the area,” he said. “Hopefully, we won’t have to go nearly as far and we can buy almost all of it locally.”

Site manager Troy Haag said the Farmers Elevator in Dimock can hold about 600,000 bushels before corn has to be stored outside.

The Farmers Elevator in Chamberlain can store 1.1 million bushels.