Deere Strike Delays Delivery of Parts to Farmers Scrambling to Finish Harvest
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
John Deere wouldn't be now so hard pressed to accept the strikers demands if they didn't had put themselves in the bad situation that only the official parts can be used to fix the tractors.
Luckily it has been unusually mild and dry this fall so there's not a lot of loss yet so far.
This was released about half an hour ago: https://release.nass.usda.gov/reports/crop1121.txt
Corn and soybean harvests are far ahead of last year in aggregate, though in larger producing states they are very slightly behind.
The US soybean harvest is ~200,000,000 bushels ahead of last year at this time, and corn is ~900,000,000 bushels ahead.
Perhaps in your area the farmers are prioritizing corn harvesting - maybe it is more profitable?
My gut feelings as an interested but detached observer are that it's been a good year for yields, too. I'd also say we've got a lot of "new" fields producing in the last 3 years which had been fallow for a decade before that. In addition, we've got winter wheat happening far more than we used to; so some of the soybeans might be green manure to be plowed in instead of harvested.
Corn all came out beginning of august, the volunteer stalks on those fields were back up to 3ft high before the freeze the other night.
The why's surrounding what you are seeing is unknown (to you), but I'd guess that a combination of prices and growing season changes due to climate change. Who knows how long it will be favorable, but if you can take advantage of it, you should do so while it lasts.