Crop Watch 2025: Corn Yield Threats

Several threats are impacting corn yields this season, including overly tight tassel wrap, Southern Rust and tar spot.

Unscripted: ‘Overly Tight Tassel Wrap’ Affecting Pollination?

Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal field agronomist, joins Tyne Morgan and Clinton Griffiths to shed light on crop conditions, particularly pollination issues.

Crop Condition News
A detailed “farming playbook” can help guide essential input investments and maximize ROI.
Planning for next season? Review the expert insights and recommendations from farmers and field agronomists on how to reduce costs and strategically reallocate resources.
A new report details the need for more ag funding to address existing weeds, insects and diseases as well as agronomic problems that have yet to reach U.S. shores.
Preemptive control of heavy-hitting diseases like white mold, frogeye leaf spot, Cercospora leaf blight and others is now possible thanks to specially designed soybeans that act like an early warning system, enabling proactive fungicide treatments and yield protection.
Several years of low commodity prices, high input costs and thin margins have taken a toll on soil stewardship in some parts of the country. As a result, farmers need to use caution and do their homework before renting ground that’s coming available in their area for 2026.
In many areas of the Corn Belt, farmers experienced 10-to-50-bu.-per-acre yield losses from disease pressure this year, says Ken Ferrie. In a period of tight margins, timely treatment decisions were more crucial than usual.
Because every growing season is unique, agronomists are encouraging corn growers to make a management plan for the “driver diseases” they’re most likely to encounter in fields next year.
Leading ag meteorologists share the weather drivers they are watching.
The fungal disease has spread to fields in at least seven states since 2018, including three new ones just this year. Once established, the pathogen is nearly impossible to eradicate, Extension plant pathologists report.
Number of bushels per acre is high on their list of priorities, but it’s not necessarily their No. 1 concern going into 2026.



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