The hot and dry September in Acadiana made for perfect conditions to harvest soybean this fall.
According to Jeremy Hebert with the LSU Ag Extension Center he says that farmers in Acadia parish have cleared 90% of all soybean fields in the parish.
Farmers that still have acres to plow should finish up by the end of this week.
For the most part its been a good year but farmers did run into some problems early in the season with heavy rains during planting.
Soybean farmer Kim Frey says "we had to do about 300 replants but overall the stands after that have been great, we've gotten ample rain, ample moisture."
With the good conditions this year many soybean farmers are experiencing above normal yields with many averaging about 40 bushels per acre.
Even with the good yields farmers are not doing the best as prices continue to be low.
Hebert says "the price hasn't been good for the last couple years so its always a struggle whenever the cost to produce that crop rises but the cost the farmer gets at the end of the day actually continues to drop."
For this reason combined with such a horrible year in 2018 and the China tariffs many farmers chose to plant fewer acres of soybean this year.
Hebert says "last year we grew roughly 30,000 acres and this year Acadia parish is set to do 17,000, so we had a pretty big drop."
