Farmers in Iowa are still feeling the impacts of drought and derecho from last year. While dryness impacted farmers in the western portion of Iowa, it was the August derecho event that took a big bite out of production in the state.
“Here in central Iowa, you kind of have the combination of both drought and derecho,” says Mark Licht, Extension cropping system specialist, Iowa State University. “Going east, almost all of it was through derecho wind damage.”
He says the scars of derecho could still be there this spring, but it will be in the form of volunteer corn.
“The last several years, we’ve been maybe seeing a little bit more volunteer corn than we normally would have, but I think it’s going to really be much more noticeable this year,” adds Licht.
He says for farmers who are faced with a situation where volunteer corn may be prevalent this year, it may be smart to move from a continuous corn-on-corn scenario to a corn-soybean rotation this year. And it’s that story that could add to soybean acres in 2021.
“Continuous corn is fairly common, and so if we can move into soybeans, then we have a better likelihood of managing things,” says Licht. “You can use those grass herbicides, and they will control it. We may have to come out a little bit later with a post application to make that work. But we can still do it and be effective.”
He says the other key is knowing which crop technology was planted in that field when the derecho hit.
“If we know what traits we had in the corn hybrids last year, those are the herbicide traits that we’re going to be dealing with in the volunteer corn,” says Licht.
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