What You Need to Know About Wet or Frozen Soybeans

With cool conditions and precipitation spreading across the Midwest, farmers are keeping a close eye on corn, and especially, soybean fields. Because soybeans tend to be the more fragile crop to harvest, make sure you’re mindful of their conditions after recent weather events.

Know that it’s not only the crop conditions that might be working against you. Field conditions could also be a hinderance if rainfall or snow has created mudholes or otherwise unfit conditions.

Experts at the University of Wisconsin offer a few tips for farmers dealing with frozen or wet soybeans:

• Let your crop insurance agent know if you can’t get the crop out of the field in time.
• Don’t leave soybeans standing over winter—they fall apart. Take what you can get this fall.
• Watch for head shatter and adjust combine settings to manage flow.
• Double check combine moisture to verify crop moisture. Cold weather is not good on sensors.
• If the soybeans are high moisture, call ahead before turning them in to an elevator to make sure they have the capacity to take them.
• If drying on farm, use lower heat around 100 degrees Fahrenheit to minimize splits.

Brian Luck from the University of Wisconsin offers specific tips for checking the combine:

1. Check sickle bar knives for sharpness and make sure guards are adjusted properly to make sure stems are cut, not broken or leaned over.
2. Reel speed should be slightly faster than ground speed to ensure plants are picked up by the header. But, consider reducing the ground speed in wet and snow-covered soybeans.
3. Remember concave clearances, rotor speeds, fan speeds and sieve settings depend on crop conditions.
   1. If the soybeans are dry, but stems, pods and leaves have higher moisture content you might need more aggressive threshing. However, aggressive threshing can lead to reduced crop quality from damage.
   2. Make incremental adjustments of concave clearances (increase for wet conditions), then threshing rotor speed (increase in wet conditions) to reach optimal settings.
   3. Ensure a uniform feed rate into the machine by maintaining a consistent load on the threshing rotor.
   4. Increased fan speed can help separate soybeans from plant material but watch for greater losses through the sieves if they’re set too high.

As always, check behind the combine to make sure settings are right for each field. If you’re seeing seed loss it’s time to make another adjustment.