While a lot of corn has been harvested across the country, more than 50% percent of the crop was still in fields going into this week, according to USDA.
With that in mind, Ken Ferrie is encouraging farmers to evaluate their corn crop for key learnings before harvesting it. The agronomic insights you can gain from doing some final ground truthing now can help you plan for 2025, says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist and owner of Crop-Tech Consulting, Heyworth, Ill.
Seeing Is Believing
For some you-are-there perspective, Ferrie just posted a video to YouTube that takes you through one of his customer’s fields that has very uneven, poor uniformity.
Part of the issue is that the central Illinois crop received little rain the past couple of months.
“This is in an area that is 9.5 inches behind in rainfall since July 1, so they’re battling a dry finish which is affecting kernel size and depth,” reports Ferrie.
But that’s not the only thing that struck down this crop, which started strong last spring with a 34,000-plant per acre stand in the field and then dropped to a 27,000-plants per acre range.
Ferrie walks the field showing the corn ears to give you a firsthand look at what caused the crop to end up with more than 4,000 barren plants per acre.
Pests, Disease, No Rainfall
Two of the agronomic issues this crop encountered, along with a lack of moisture, were tar spot and heavy aphid pressure. The latter was particularly bad this year, stripping yield potential – even though the grower sprayed the pests.
“We probably just didn’t spray quick enough,” Ferrie says. “We let too many plants get waxed up, and then we had additional pressure on with the tar spot in dry weather.
“I know a lot of people say, ‘Don’t worry about aphids. You can get your crop pollinated at a 50% aphid infestation,’ but it can be a catastrophe if aphids take out those upper leaves and abort that ear on you,” Ferrie adds. “So we’re going to be a little more proactive in spraying for aphids in the future. While this field got sprayed, it probably should have been sprayed a couple weeks earlier.”
In this 5-minute video, Ferrie talks through what happened to the corn crop early in the season and then in late summer. The mini tutorial can help you sidestep some agronomic potholes next season that will steal yield.
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