Franklin County’s top crop is expected to do better than expected, agriculture experts said.

Even with only about 5 percent of the county’s soybeans harvested, the crop is looking better than projected, despite the high heat and low rain totals of the past growing season, local agriculture industry representatives said.

Franklin County’s top crop is expected to do better than expected, agriculture experts said.

Even with only about 5 percent of the county’s soybeans harvested, the crop is looking better than projected, despite the high heat and low rain totals of the past growing season, local agriculture industry representatives said.

Less than 50,000 bushels of the versatile bean have been brought in to Ottawa Coop’s Ottawa location, Matthew Vajnar, the coop’s grain merchandiser, said. But what has come in looks healthy overall, he said.

“Most of the beans so far are pretty good quality,” Vajnar said. “Looks like the rains that came in the last half of August helped. It could have been a lot worse, from a yield and a quality standpoint.”

Those weather changes in August might have extended the growing season, Vajnar said, allowing for more beans to mature for the October harvest. Some of the beans that have been brought in have been of poor quality — shriveled or small — but Vajnar predicts those might have come from the fields that received less rainfall.

Normal soybean yields for this area are between 40 and 50 bushels per acre, Vajnar said. The harvest yields this year, Vajnar said, could be half of a normal crop or slightly above — with yields ranging from 5 to 35 bushels per acre, depending on how much rain the plants received.

After a “disaster” of a corn crop, Darren Hibdon, extension agent with the Frontier Extension District No. 11, said, the county has been fortunate to have a soybean crop at all.

“Part of the county got some pretty good rain from Hurricane Isaac, and then we got some little rains throughout the county, and things started to change.” Hibdon said. “So, we have been pleasantly surprised here to actually have some beans to harvest.”

Soybean acreage usually ranges between 55,000 and 60,000 acres in Franklin County, Hibdon said. Agreeing with Vajnar, Hibdon said they are not likely to see yields in the 40- or 50-bushel range, but rather he expects yields to measure in the 20s based on some early cutting reports.

The Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service, likewise, has revised its estimate upward for the size of this year’s soybean crop, despite the harsh summer months. The agency reported it expects Kansas growers to harvest 82.5 million bushels of soybeans. That is up 17 percent from last month, but is 19 percent less than what farmers harvested a year ago. The state hasn’t had a soybean crop this small since 2003, the report stated.

The soybean price sat at $14.73 as of Monday afternoon, giving farmers some wiggle room to make up for the poor corn harvest, Hibdon said. And there is continued reason to be pleased with the soybean harvest that has yet to fully get underway, he said.

“It’s definitely going to be a lighter than normal harvest,” Hibdon said. “Yields are going to be much lower than we like to see. However, given the summer that we had and the conditions that we’ve gone through, we actually feel pretty fortunate to have beans to harvest.”

Drought conditions continue across Kansas, but with recent rains the wheat that has been planted has managed to take hold, Hibdon said. In addition, the worse-than-average corn crop has prompted more wheat acreage to be planted, he said.

“The wheat that’s planted does look fairly good,” Hibdon said. “The stands that are coming up look fairly good, but still more wheat to be planted.”