Small grain harvest all but wrapped up

As Richland County prepares for sugarbeet harvest, which will begin in earnest next week, I am happy to report that we are all but finished with small grain harvest.  There are still a few fields here and there that need to be ran but they are few and far between.

I guess I would classify the small grain harvest as good.  Most of the reports that I have heard from wheat harvest tended to be  that the yield was good to great but the protein was lacking.  Of course this is not true everywhere as there were pockets that did get good protein numbers and then there were pockets that received hail just weeks before harvest and didn't yield much at all.

I would lump our barley harvest in the same boat as the wheat except that, early in the barley harvest I heard reports of many loads being rejected for malting because of sprout damage.  I'm not sure about what percentage of the malting barley was rejected but it sounded at one point like it was a fairly substantial amount.

Most of the corn that was harvested for silage is out of the field as well.  In a couple more weeks we will surely start harvesting corn for grain and I think that should yield fairly well also.  It will be interesting to see what the few acres of soybeans that are in the county yield as well.  I was really looking forward to seeing how the trials at the Eastern Agricultural Research Center yielded here in Sidney, but alas, that field was one of the few that got hailed out. 

Most importantly, the harvest season has been a safe one so far as far as I know.  Let's hope this continues through the beet campaign.

Working together for safety in agriculture...

That is the theme for the 2013 National Farm Safety and Health Week which is September 15-21.  While agriculture is our nation's top industry, it unfortunately is also one of the most dangerous industries.  In 2012 agriculture had 475 fatal industries which ranks third out of all the industries in the United States.  However, those 475 fatalities equate to 21.2 fatalities per 10,000 workers which is the highest when compared to all other industries.

Please keep these statistics and numbers in mind as you are finishing up harvest, loading and unloading grain bins, feeding cattle or loading them up to move them from place to place.  We do not want to add to these numbers.

For more information, press releases, and statistics, please visit the website for the National Education Center for Farm Safety.