By Tom Webb

Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Minnesota’s fall harvest has begun, following a year marked by tough weather and plunging grain prices.

The U.S. Agriculture Department said Monday that 10 percent of Minnesota’s soybean acres have been harvested, along with 2 percent of its corn acres. That’s about a week behind the usual pace.

But crop prices are the big change from last year. Corn has slipped below $3 a bushel across much of the state, roughly half the price of a year ago.

Soybeans are in the $8-a-bushel range, down from the $14 level a year ago. Forecasts of a mammoth U.S. harvest have pushed prices down to levels not seen in several years. What’s making matters tougher is, Minnesota growing conditions were difficult this year.

“This is kind of a perfect storm of bad conditions this year,” Seth Naeve, an extension soybean specialist at the University of Minnesota, said Monday. “It was too wet early, and too dry late, and that’s across a pretty good chunk of the state.

“And there was an early frost at the end, and that’s going to take a bit off the top of some the late-maturing varieties,” Naeve added. “We just won’t have the yield there that farmers would like to see.”

Reports from elsewhere in the Corn Belt, however, point to record yields in many other states. The corn crop, in particular, is shaping up to be a bin-buster. USDA is forecasting record corn production and record soybean production this fall.

“It’s tough when you have low prices and a lot of states are harvesting big huge crops,” Naeve said. “It’s going to be kind of depressing for farmers to hear of these great yields in Indiana and Iowa.”

For many grain farmers, the silver lining is that this year’s low prices and difficult conditions follow a series of excellent years. So banks aren’t seeing a surge of troubled borrowers.

As of Sept. 1, Minnesota’s corn yields were forecast at 170 bushels an acre, up 10 bushels from last year. Soybean production in Minnesota was forecast at 42 bushels an acre.

Since those forecasts, however, an early but very spotty frost brought an end to the growing season in some parts of the state. In other parts of Minnesota, major crops continue to grow and mature.