Repeated rainfall across the Midwest will keep combines out of fields for weeks — possibly a couple of months — according to USDA's top regional climate official.

Dennis Todey, director of USDA's Midwest Climate Hub, told Brownfield that farmers should prepare for a drawn-out harvest this fall as wet weather continues to stall fieldwork. His assessment frames the delay not as a short-term nuisance but as a disruption with staying power.

"What has happened now is going to affect us from a soils and harvest perspective for several weeks, if not a couple months at this point," Todey said.

His comment carries weight because it separates two distinct problems that growers will have to manage in sequence. The first is the immediate one: saturated fields that prevent machinery from entering and combining crops already at or near maturity. The second is longer-lasting — soil conditions that remain compromised even after the rain stops, extending the operational drag well beyond the precipitation itself.

That distinction matters for farm planning. A harvest delayed purely by waiting on rain can compress quickly once skies clear. A harvest delayed by wet soils depends on drying time, which shortens as daylight and temperatures decline through late fall. The two-week to two-month window Todey outlines reflects that second, slower constraint.

Todey's role adds credibility to the warning. The Midwest Climate Hub, part of USDA's network of regional climate offices, works directly with producers and extension staff across the Corn Belt, and its assessments draw on both observed conditions and forecast data. When the hub's director frames a delay in months rather than days, that reflects an institutional read of conditions across the region, not a single-state anecdote.

For growers, the practical implication is patience — the trait Todey explicitly recommends for the weeks ahead. Pushing equipment onto saturated ground risks soil compaction and rutting that can carry yield consequences into next season, adding a further cost calculation to a decision that is already being forced by weather.

The timing complicates what is normally the most logistics-heavy stretch of the crop year. Delays of this length can stack harvest operations against later-season fieldwork, grain drying, and fall fertilizer and tillage programs, forcing growers to triage what gets done before the ground freezes.

Todey's statement is a condition-based assessment, not a harvested-result projection — it describes what standing water and saturated soils are doing to the harvest calendar now, and how long those effects are likely to persist. Actual crop outcomes will depend on how the delay plays out against crop maturity, drying conditions, and any further rainfall the region receives.

Going forward, growers across the Midwest will be watching both the forecast and their local soil conditions closely, as Todey's warning suggests the 2019-style risk of a harvest that stretches deep into — or beyond — its normal window is firmly in play this fall.