Crop yields fare better than expected

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by Dara Newson

Story Created: Oct 1, 2012 at 5:41 PM CDT

Story Updated: Oct 1, 2012 at 6:30 PM CDT

Just last week 73 percent of the state was experiencing exceptional drought conditions. That was classified as the worst case scenario.

But, surprisingly for some Central Nebraska farmers' their crops turned out to be in much better shape than expected.

According to CPI in Juniata, production is pretty good. They've already taken in 45 percent of the corn they took in last year and received over a million bushels of beans. Those are figures they didn't foresee in light of the drought.

As farmers line up for their routine checks some realize those countless hours of center pivot irrigation has unpredictably paid off.

"The dry land wasn't very good, but the irrigated - where we could get water on - it seems to be pretty good," said Kenesaw farmer Leonard Schroeder.

Schroeder has yielded 230 bushels per acre.

"In fact, I think maybe it's a bit better than some years," Schroeder said.

Suprisingly, they are different results than Schroeder anticipated.

"It's been dry and it weighs good like 14 moisture about 64 pounds," said Schroeder.

But that still doesn't change the results dry land farmers saw. Their crops still shriveled and died away.

"We get 80 to 100 on non-irrigated, but this year without the rain it's very bad," said Juniata farmer Troy Uden.

Since 1988 Uden has been a farmer in Juniata. While his dry land crops didn't see a harvest due to the drought he also had good results for his irrigated yields up to about 250 on the best places. But the cost to irrigate, one could say, outweighs the bad.

"Irrigation costs are very high with the high diesel costs. A lot of fields are running at $150 yards per acre just for fuel so its a lot of expenses," Uden said.

"The pivots had to run quite a bit more. They're just all different every year," said Schroeder.

CPI of Juniata also said they've taken in a total of 1.8 million bushels this year.

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