Between the Rows

Greg Roth

"More Lessons from an Interesting Year"

Last year is in the history books now but it will go down as another interesting one for many corn producers. Perhaps the one thing that I remember most was the unusually dry spring and fall that both had dramatic impacts on corn management. The crop also seemed to yield reasonably well despite the lack of moisture in some areas.

The dry spring allowed for a rapid planting season with many folks finishing corn planting by the first week of May. According to USDA figures, 68% of the Pennsylvania crop had been planted by May 13, up from an average of 41%. The dry soil conditions contributed to less than ideal emergence in some fields and some concerns about weed control in others. In our own trials, we paid careful attention to our planting depth and got reasonable stands, especially where we no-tilled. Where corn was planted shallow in tilled ground many folks reported some cases of severe delayed emergence. I was also impressed with the level of weed control we did get from our premergence herbicide programs despite the dry season. The big lesson-plant corn 1.5 to 2.0 inches deep, not any shallower, and perhaps a bit deeper if the soil is warm and dry.

The dry summer was a mixed blessing for corn producers. In some areas disease pressure was low and this helped yields. But for most fields suffered some drought stress. Yields dropped statewide to 94 bushels/acre down from 127 last year. That means we produced about 40 million bushels less corn this year than last.

The dry conditions in late summer also resulted in a drier than normal silage crop that dried down rapidly once it got to about 60% moisture. The lesson here- measure silage moisture- don’t guess and plan accordingly.

On the plus side the grain crop dried down rapidly and the soil was dry at harvest in most places. This resulted in record low grain moistures, good test weights and not much potential for soil compaction during harvest. Much corn was harvested and stored without being dried. Harvest was also completed in a very timely fashion. By the 4^th of November USDA estimated that 74% of the Pennsylvania crop had been harvested compared to a five-year average of 55%. Don’t count on many more harvest years like this in your career.

One concern an early fall might generate is that corn growers now might have some tendency to shift to later maturing hybrids. Then, in a more normal year, hybrids won’t dry down well and test weights suffer. I suspect this won’t be a big problem- in fact I see more and more producers relying more on hybrids that are on the early side of their maturity zone. The reason seems to be that many of these early hybrids are yielding close to or better than the full season hybrids, they allow an earlier start to harvest and drying costs are greatly reduced. Data from our hybrid test reports in this issue of Corn Talk suggest that there are high yielding early (low moisture) hybrids with good test weight available in each maturity zone.

The other issue that impressed me, and many producers, was how well the crop yielded given the rainfall in some areas. I attribute this to the early planting, drought stress tolerance of the hybrids we are using now and the adoption of no-till and conservation tillage by some producers. Because of these advances in genetics and crop management, corn yields have been increasing in our state by about 1.1 bu/acre per year in our state during the last 40 years.

Hopefully in 2002 yields should improve again. It will be an even year numbered year, which seems to help with rainfall for some reason, and there should be a few factors like reduced compaction, reduced N leaching losses and fall tillage that should have positive effects on yields as well.

January, 2002