Here is wishing everyone a happy last half of April greeting. At this time much of the Midwest recently was blessed with several unseasonably warm days or a week with temps in the upper 70s and even low to mid 80s causing a rapid snow melt and soil warm up. And now a few days later in the northern corn states of Nebraska, the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, snow is falling again as of late Saturday and early Sunday. The totals may not amount to much, but the huge drop in air and soil temperatures was and is real, with forecasters predicting a repeat of possibly the same thing next week. Supposedly there is a large swell of super cooled water parked off the west coast of the U.S. causing this cool down. This up and down yoyo is similar to what we have seen the last five years growing seasons where unseasonable warm temps began in late March and lasted into mid-April, before going into the deep freeze for two to three weeks. Two years ago, everyone pulled out their winter jackets and spring field work and planting progress came to a complete halt for about ten days. The who thing seemed like the Twilight Zone during the peak of the Covid shutdown. But things gradually warmed up and the growing season continued though the rainfall in much of the western cornbelt did not return to normal levels.
It will be interesting to see the report on planting progress for the section of Iowa and the rest of the major Ag states in the Midwest. The reports told of field conditions that were ideal in areas and conditions were very warm. So, the guys and ladies that got the planters running ran several days at a rapid pace amid reports that a smallish percentage of operators had gotten much or even all of their seed in the ground. Now with 11 of the next 14 days and 22 of the next 36 are projected to be below normal temps for the DM area, and 17 of 21 days for the northern IA counties we may see a number of growers wondering if they should have gotten into such a hurry. With the majority of operators running 16 to 24 row running high speed planters, it does not take many days to complete corn planting. Typically, early worries subside once the corn stand evaluations tell us that germination and emergence percentages are good, but we don’t know if early or midseason plantings were the highest yielding until the yield maps are compiled in the fall.
I met with a small group of insightful corn growers from different part of S Dakota about six weeks ago who were watching the prediction for a wetter and cooler summer. They recognized that more rain meant more clouds, thus less sunshine and fewer GDUs, so most of those growers were moving more of their acres slightly earlier hybrids, as in from 108 and 110 RM to 102 to 105 RM, so as to not have such wet corn at harvest to minimize their LP expenditures this fall for drying their corn.
And this serves as a great example of what the farming business or game is not an easy one to play. There are so many what-ifs and adjustments that have to be made reactively as conditions or timings are changing or need to be altered continually. One think that has changed for the better this year is that many of the supply chain issues seem to have decreased or been improved. Fertilizer prices have dropped more than expected, but remain much higher than pre-pandemic or pre-Ukrainian event.
Global Warming
Who is right and who is wrong on this issue. Who should be speaking from the Bully Pulpit? An interesting U-tube clip showed a delegate farmer from California quizzing members of the latest California Transportation Committee trying explain how wise they are and justify why they get to make the rules. Meaning they are trying to justify their budgets. This well spoken farmer asked the simple question as to what the percent of CO2 composed the atmosphere. Their guesses were typically in the 5 to 8% range. They acted surprised when told the actually concentration was .04 percent. It is puzzling how they typically treat carbon dioxide as a serous pollutant rather than food for plants in their task to turn a combination of water and CO2 into sugar. The CO2 levels were much higher in the age of the dinosaurs as they sloshed around in forested swampy jungles.
Planting, Germination and the Waiting Game
The majority of the corn and bean crops across the Midwest still needs to be planted. May 8th appears to be the date when daytime highs rise above normal. While early season worries are very common for early planted field, and they don’t usually materialize as replants. We typically see fields planted a week or so later often catchup to them before flowering date as the increasing day length of day constitute more of hours of heat even if GDU charting doesn’t account for additional hours of heat each day. (The farmers who planted their corn acres already will have to be watching their fields and looking for small spikes poking up the plants have accumulated a total of 110 to 120 GDUs). The weather forecasts I have seen indicate fields in central Iowa have received between 70 – 80 GDUs by Saturday 4/15th. When I was asked by anxious growers wanting to begin planting early, I suggested if they were going to choose to plant early, begin with their larger and heavier kernels as those possess more oils and energy than smaller and lighter kernels. If the kernels require more energy and time to emerge those kernels will possess more energy to emerge under tougher conditions.
We are now seeing more companies that are combining minerals and microbes to produce their seed treatments. Speaking at Jim Martindale’s Dec.16th a university researcher told how biological/mineral seed treatments provide activity referred to as competitive exclusion. This means enabling good microbes to get their populations established on the young seedling before any bad guys invade. This produces a plant that will outgrow and outcompete other plants.
A big change in how soybean crops are managed is the move to plant earlier into cooler soils. The attempted goal of those operators is to get the plants growing earlier to grow taller and to form more podded nodes on the main stem. My contention and that of more seasoned growers who have honed their bean growing skills is to put effort and products into practice and encourage the formation of more branches on each plant. Then while the total podded node count topping out at 22 or a rarer 24 count on the main stem, if you can tweak the hormone levels in the plant to increase the cytokine vs auxin ratio, you can have branch numbers reach 4 to 5 or 5 to 7 commonly. Boosting those hormone levels; including minerals, sugars and Pursanova energized water in foliar mixes will greatly increase yield potentials. This year we saw a maximum of 14 side branches. One particular knowledgeable colleague sent me his picture of him holding a bean plant which had been sprayed with SoyFx and it had 23 branches.
Capitalizing on that added branch count requires supplying a steady supply of minerals and energy to the plants so as to not having the plant enter into a mineral or energy deficit where ethylene production goes up to where it causes the formation of abscission layers and the pods drop. In a drier year or with higher pod counts the stem may not be capable of transporting enough minerals to meet pod fill needs. That is when foliar nutrition with rapid intake minerals products need to be applied. Having the minerals enter the plants thru the leaves as demonstrated by HB Tukey in his work with radioactive minerals in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. Using amino acid chelated minerals are currently the optimum product to use. Foliar fish can also play a role as they act as an AA supplement.
The Microbial World
The percentage of farmers using one or more microbials in producing their crops are making those applications in hospitable fields in the right manner and at the right time have been showing good to excellent results. An example is a top notch north central Iowa grower applied BioEnsure in the heat of the 2022 drought and with his combine monitor saw a 75+ bu/A yield benefit. That was one good example. There are so many new products from a host of new companies that it is difficult to keep track of all the new ones. Through trial and error growers are learning to both feed them and apply them to a safe environment rather than one where high salt levels and residues of harsh pesticides are at medium to high levels. One place not to apply them and expect them to perform well might be in NE Iowa where five applications per season of a non-selective herbicide are applied to a seed growers’ field. Those growers might first want to send in a soil sample to Research Health Lab in Fairfield to determine the residue levels which exist. If those levels are moderate to high they should first apply a biological mix named Yield and Shield along with a certain Lactobacillus juice to enhance the microbial activity of Y&S.
Items to Watch For
As the corn plants begin to emerge, watch for plants that may have gotten caught under a packed upper soil layer. A light rain could remediate crusting problems as long as the spikes have not yet unfurled its leaves. Thicker crusting may require a rotary hoeing.
The next item to keep in mind has to do with winged critters. As the plants reach 4 to 6” the time is right for winged moths to ride southerly winds from the Texas and Mexican gulf coast. Where they will mate and lay their eggs is always a crap shoot, but is typically a field containing grassy weed or a cover crop. Find out if one of the neighboring universities has an entomology team which monitors any black light traps and posts those counts available to you on a weekly or daily basis. If no light trap team is doing such work establish contact with the state entomologist to see if you can access any catch data they have access to.
In a future episode I plan to provide information about what might be the most interesting book on microbes written in modern times. It is called ‘I Contain Multitudes’. The book by Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Ed Yong is incredible in its details about a multitude of different microbes and how they have evolved alongside and with humans, animals, fish, insects a many of their cells and bodies. It was recommended to me by top USDA/ARS soil microbiologist, Robert Kremer, a few years ago and I finally picked it up and read it. Young just wrote and released another Pulitzer Prize winning book called ‘An Immense World’ which focuses on the many senses that animal have beyond which those that humans possess.
Bob Streit is an independent crop consultant and columnist for Farm News. He can be reached at (515) 709-0143 or www.CentralIowaAg.com.