Fast harvest pleases northeast Iowa farmer

Oct 30, 2024

Irony came to mind when Jerry Dove discussed his 2024 season’s wet start and dry ending.

“We had a lot of water in the fields early in the season,” said Dove, in his 43rd year of farming.

He summarized this fall’s progress way ahead of his regular harvest schedule as convenient and sort of a relief.

“By and large, we are doing very well. We will get wrapped up this week,” said Dove, who credited the efficient harvest to his tight work partnership with his wife, Mary.

So far, they’ve hit corn yields from about 215 to 240 bushels per acre. Moisture was 16-18.5% further out in the field. Closer to their house, he noted it dropped and measured at 13.5%.

“The variability is amazing. There’s so much of it this year,” he said.

Soybean conditions were much the same as corn, he said.

Dove found quality and quantity differences in a few fields to be “head scratchers.”

That’s not atypical in his five decades of farming.

“Refined genetics developed in the last 15 years are phenomenal and result in higher yields and exceptional quality,” he said.

Dove said his farm participates in the same weed control trial as the Iowa State University Northeast Research and Demonstration Farm near Nashua, 30 miles straight north of his home farm.

The trial features alternating stretches of blue grass between crop rows.

“The goal is to get more weeds out and to make doing that easier,” Dove said.

The bold dark greenness of the bluegrass stands out among the vanilla-colored corn stalks.

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Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.