By Connor Lynch
KENT BRIDGE — A cloud hangs over Western Ontario’s harvest season. After a difficult planting season and a consistently wet year for much of the region, some soybean yields are remarkable but corn is plagued by vomitoxin.
Soybeans for some were a bin-buster. But not at Kent Bridge where elevator-operator Daniel VanDeVelde, who runs Thompson’s Elevator, said that as of Oct. 29, soybean harvest was about 95 per cent complete. Yields ranged from average to above average but typically above average by about 10 bushels an acre, he said.
About an hour northeast, at Lucan, elevator operator John Geudens, had filled his soybean bins by Oct. 30. “Soybeans were exceptional,” he said, with most fields between 55 bu/ac and 65 bu/ac but some as high as 75. “A lot of (farmers) are having the best yields they’ve ever had.”
Three groups predicted an Ontario record yield for soybeans. Maizex forecast 46.6 bu/ac. Statistics Canada forecast 50.2 bu/ac and Great Lakes Grain forecast 54 bu/ac. The Ontario five-year average is 45.9 bu/ac.
The deep south seemed to have it rougher. Kent County farmers had average yields, whereas farmers in Lambton and Middlesex were seeing some of their best yields ever. Farther north there was more variation.
