August is over, and farmers are making their rounds in their fields to harvest their crops, ranging from wheat to sugarbeets to soybeans. Even with a late planting start, the harvest has been coming along nicely, according to several farmers.
One of those farmers is the Director of the American Crystal Sugar’s Crookston Factory District, Scott Knutson, who said that despite not being able to start planting when they usually do, the amount and quality of the spring wheat they have collected so far has been very good.
“With the planting this spring, we were delayed quite a bit by over three weeks,” Knutson said. “And the harvest has been progressing nicely, the bushels have been nice, and qualities been good so far on the spring wheat.” Despite the wheat doing well for the area, Knutson noted that he hopes for a bit more rain for some of the other crops they’re harvesting.
“Pre-haul for the wheat had started throughout the valley on the 23rd, and factories started up on the 20th, but everything is looking for a little bit of moisture,” said Knutson. “Especially in the Central Valley, we’ve missed some of the moisture that they’ve had up north and down south, so a little bit of moisture would be appreciated, especially on the soybeans and the sugarbeets.”
Knutson says that despite the lack of moisture, the farmers have harvested about a third of their crop and believe they can complete much more by the end of this week. He says that farmers have begun the harvest of sugarbeets this week and will begin harvesting soybeans next week. “We’re probably sitting at about a third of our crop that we’ve harvested thus far, and with another good week or so, we’d get quite a ways into it. We’re going to run into some later seeded wheat that’ll delay us for a bit, just waiting for that to dry down more, but that’s typical when you go up and down the valley,” Knutson explained. “On our operation, we started on Monday with the pre-haul in the sugarbeets and the other crops. The soybeans will probably be after the beets this year, just with how their timing-wise and maturity is. We’ll keep progressing on the spring wheat and get into the beet harvest next.”
Other areas throughout the valley, such as Moorhead and Drayton, have had a bit of a better yield of wheat due to their better weather conditions and rainfall amounts, but Knutson believes that the harvest looks to be on schedule for Crookston for this and next week.
With the harvest underway, Knutson reminds people to be mindful on the roadways of all of the delivery trucks holding the harvests, especially at approaches and corners where the trucks may be turning out of the fields, at stops, or into factory entrances.