October, with its harvest moons, is upon us. It will be the month when our two major crops will be harvested and put into storage until each farmer finds a home for it, be it for feed on a local level, moved to an ethanol plant within easy driving distance, railed to a further away feed lot or processing plant, or moved part ways around the world and likely used as animal feed. The work of expanding markets for our grain has paid dividends in that there are now so many markets for our grain. This is the month when all of the steps that go into planning for and growing a crop culminate with combines making pass after pass to fill the grain tank, then into trucks, carts or wagons to move to a feedlot or storage facility.
Across much of the state the corn crop changed in appearance in many fields. Most plants went from a goldish brown to a shade of light black as saprophytic fungi began to grow and consume leaf tissue that has been dead for several weeks. The presence of heavy dews and lack of sunshine created perfect conditions for the organisms which degrade stalks and residue began to get more aggressive and degrade plants which have not been combined yet.
I have been getting more calls about this black dust which is billowing out of the rear of the machines to turn all colors of combines black. A common question has been if breathing it in may constituted a human health hazard. About ten years ago an observant and curious farmer turned harvest dust samples from conventional versus GE hybrids into a bacterial lab to get the species typed out. The organism known to cause health problems in human lungs was found at fairly high levels. Avoid the dust as much as possible and have decent dust masks available for those unable to be in a cab.
Harvest Progress on Corn
Most corn growers had to play a waiting game with corn harvest as they waited for the grain to dry down from the mid-20s moisture levels to another three to five points drier. That was the case a week ago. In just the last few days I have heard of corn dropping up to four points of moisture in the past week. Some corn in extreme northern MO is being harvested at 14% moisture, which sure speeds up harvest as there is no drying needed.
As far as yields the trend is below what it could have been, but better than expected and not bad for the stress which high temperatures and lack of moisture could have done to the crop. Growers can point to the different factors in their own fields which can attribute yield deviations to. For perhaps the first time maybe ever the presence of pattern tiling was negative. Not getting the last few inches of water away from a field or out of the profile depleted root available moisture.
The fact that corn yields have been decent in most cases has to be a testament to the advances by seed breeding companies in screening each of their newly developed hybrids or inbred lines at test stations on the western edge of the corn belt where irrigation is a must. They turn the water off early to test the genetics’ ability to still yield well without a full amount of water. Having worked four years in SW Kansas where irrigation is a must, we learned that each inch of moisture was usually worth 12 to 14 bushels of corn. Depending on yields yet to be determined, the yield gain from each inch of rain may now be greater. As an aside, the saying in that arid area was that in inch of rain was worth two inches of irrigation water.
In central Nebraska this season, where many corn plants were several feet shorter than normal, growers have been taking note of several characteristics of new sorghum varieties. These include the better drought tolerance of the yellow and white sorghum varieties, the increase feed and export market values, the cheaper seed cost and lastly the development of sterile grain where shattercane problems have been lessen. Raising corn is often much preferred over raising other fringe crops, but if conditions remain dry, and farmers recognize Elwynn’s long term forecast of 2025 being the big drought, might sorghum acres creep further east in KS, NE, IA and SD? Never say never.
The meteorologist, a number of us follow, attributes the higher corn belt temperatures and higher ocean temperatures to increased positive ion output by the sun as we moved into sunspot cycle #25, or some manipulation of temperatures using manmade equipment capable of super heating the ionosphere. In examining the record high ocean temperatures, he calculated that those are currently 4.5 standard deviations higher that is considered natural. The chance of that happened he calculated as 1 in 15,000 to 1 in 150,000. Just saying…
In planning for the 2024 corn crop, a grower has to be imaginative to develop a list of every input item and every management practice they might implement to help their plants increase drought tolerance.
Soybean Harvest
The main challenge with soybean harvest now is that the arid conditions have dropped the bean’s moisture to levels where quite a few dollars are lost to having 8 or 9% grain to take to market. Small but frequent light showers which would increase grain moisture levels are desired. Yields have generally been decent to good, depending on when and if rain fell and the level of management and inputs put into the crops. For the operators who have recognized that foliar applications of nutrients are needed to meet grain fill needs, especially with dry soils and higher yield expectations, that take-home message is being repeated this fall. There is a long list of input practices which can create higher yield potential, yet getting rain during the final weeks of grain fill is still important. Where guys were pleased with their final yields they are still thinking how much better yields would have been with a 2-inch rain in late August or early September.
Speaking of soybeans, be aware that work by members of the 4-state gall midge task force have verified that the territory in which the flies and their maggots have been found has jumped across I-35, has been found in MO and KS and now been documented in 160 counties. The first emerged adults, a tiny fly was found in eastern NE a few weeks earlier than seen before. The experts held a meeting in Lincoln last year and basically there were no practical ways to treat for them using hard chemistry. The good news for most is that to this point they primarily affect the outside borders of the field in the early years, so treating the seed for the outside border rows should suffice. Work by a MN agronomist found that applying an in-season band of Thimet did a decent job, but getting that done with available equipment would not be an easy task.
That leaves two options in the arena of botanical products. The first would be the application of fungal spores of Beauveria bassiana or a liquid form of processed shrimp shells called Chitosan to the seed destined for the border rows. The BB is available from a number of companies in both liquid and dry formulations. BB of the Carolinas would be one source while the MycoGold product also contains BB spores. The efficacy of the Chitosan has been proven by its use in Chinese Ag for centuries, at Mississippi State in a comparison by Dr Ernie Flint in a trial versus Telone for nematode control and by its success in controlling damaging nematode populations in potato and sugar beet fields in ID, UT and a few other states. We have seen amazing results in fields in N Central Iowa in recent years, but are still seeking optimum rules. How the Chitosan can be applied foliarly in season using GDU based nematode or insect egg hatching dates may be the key to their successful use. A company called Tidal Grow has a very concentrated liquid form of the chitosan going into trials this season. In addition, the Chitosan products also provides decent, long residual fungal control as their mycelial strands are composed of chitin.
Other Cornbelt Tidbits
That announcement was made late in the season that Dicamba resistant waterhemp was reported in several locations in Iowa. While this was reported as a surprise, a visiting weed specialist from Arkansas who spoke at a Spraytec meeting several years ago. Jason Norsworthy, of the U of Ark and the successor to Ford Balwin, related a few years ago that he had seen this in his lab already. Nature always seems to have a way of mutating around every hurdle we place in its path.
Tar Spot was found in six counties in Iowa this season by a seed corn company scout. The area of concentration was in central Iowa, which was the area with the most rainfall in the middle of the summer.
The Edge Effect showed up again in cornfields and left a number of growers in trying to figure out exactly why this was happening. I thought that the answer to this had been proposed already. The clues to this were proposed about twenty years ago by a wise tech rep who was able to tap into their company’s surfactant experts after I had passed on a question by a northern Iowa corn grower. A commonality is it normally affects the border rows of corn planted next to the north side of a later planted and sprayed bean field. See how good of a crop detective you might be to figure this out.
With Bidenflation forcing interest rates up to 9% of crop expenses, corn growers are asking if fall application of P fertilizers can be justified over spring applications based on crop availability. This topic comes up at the International Bio-Stimulant Conferences. That is the code word for biologicals which make dry fertilizer available to the roots which only take up fertilizer in the liquid form. When quizzed at the two most recent conferences with the top researchers present the average guesses as to how much of the P applied to the soil are available in year one, range from 3 to 5 %. The main microbe facilitating P availability are the Pseudomonads. In other words, get your microbes applied and activated.
The use of cover crops is bound to be increasing in future seasons, but being successful with using them still has its challenges. One of those issues and the solution may soon be overcome. That issue is that cover crops are used to create improved soil health, thus higher yields. But what is the product normally used to terminate a crop? You guessed it. One product that will now be more widely available this spring is a patented vinegar, oil and salt mix, which might now be applied in a perfected electrostatic sprayer, which will now reduce drift and rates. Keep your ears open for news about this.
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.