Forecast

Unpacking the Disappointment: 5 Reasons Some Iowa Growers Had Ho-Hum Corn Yields

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 22:43:59 GMT

A growing season that started with tremendous potential in east-central Iowa finished with yield results that left many growers in the area disappointed by average or below-average results, according to Agronomist Nicole Stecklein.

Stecklein details five key factors she believes contributed to disappointing 2025 yield results. Here are her key takeaways from this season as well as some recommendations for 2026.

1. A ‘planting date effect’ occurred: Stecklein says she is an early-plant advocate and likes to see farmers start planting when the soil is fit and a good weather forecast is in the cards.

“In eight years out of 10 years, that usually turns out pretty good. In a lot of cases, the early planted corn will be your best corn, but that wasn’t the case this year,” she says.

Early-planted corn, particularly those hybrids in early to mid-maturities, generally underperformed.

Stecklein identified two main culprits. First, there was considerable localized soil crusting. Even with rotary hoeing, significant variability in ear development and inconsistent pollination impacted the crop and contributed to yield loss.

A second culprit was that the earlier planted corn seemed to bear the brunt of later-season stresses, particularly from disease issues, heavy moisture and above-average temperatures.

Too much rain and disease were problems for Ward Hunter, Ogden, Iowa, especially southern rust. He told U.S. Farm Report’s Tyne Morgan that his early corn hybrid yields were disappointing, coming in at around 220 bu. per acre, even though he applied a fungicide.

“We were at about our APH,” he says. “If it hadn’t been for disease pressure, I think we could have been in the 270s or so [with early maturing hybrids] here in central Iowa.”

FBN Poll Results: This week's poll, with over 1,700 responses, shows 50% of participating FBN members seeing corn yields below expectations. Review the full results and share your thoughts: https://t.co/37lji8uYSc #farmersfirst #harvest25 #corn pic.twitter.com/LoijKZGnJ5
— FBN (@FBNFarmers) October 31, 2025

For farmers wondering if they should move to later planting dates across the baord in 2026, Stecklein says probably not. Instead, she says to continue to evaluate soils and weather conditions at planting.

Ken Ferrie offers similar advice to farmers in central Iowa and central Illinois. “My advice for farmers is if we have a green light in April, plant some corn,” says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

However, Ferrie says farmers shouldn’t be afraid to wait until May to get a green light from Mother Nature to start the planting process.

“We never know how the rest of the year will play out. So, breaking the planting window up is a good way to mitigate risk and take the jam out of the fall of having everything ready at the same time,” he explains.

2. High winds were a blow to corn performance: June brought a series of severe high-wind events to large swaths of east-central Iowa.

The damage manifested in root lodging, green snap, and willowing. Corn that had already tasseled before the winds hit fared better, thanks to better developed root systems and brace roots, Stecklein reports.

Conversely, corn that had not yet tasseled suffered the most severe root lodging and green snap, as its rapidly growing, brittle nodes were highly susceptible.

Willowing, which occurs where corn plants bend at the waist, proved to be a stealthy yield robber this summer. The stress from bending, particularly around the developing ear node, led to poorly pollinated ears with short husks, leaving grain exposed to elements, birds and disease, significantly impacting quality and yield.

Tons of sub 150 corn in our area. Harrison and Pottawattamie county Iowa. Too much wind/greensnap and too much diesese. It’s the crop that never was.
— Brandon Clark (@clarkbrandon44) November 3, 2025

While wind is an unavoidable reality across the state, Stecklein would advise farmers in consistently windy areas to consider prioritizing root and green snap scores when selecting hybrids for 2026.

“This is not a foolproof way to get around the wind. It’s just knowing that some hybrids have a lower possibility of getting hit by wind in a window when they’re vulnerable, because all corn is vulnerable. The wind is all about timing. But if you shorten that window, then you’re decreasing the chances that you’ll get hit at a vulnerable time,” she explains.

3. Heat took a bite out of yield potential. Another major factor impacting 2025 yields in east-central Iowa was the pervasive overnight heat during grain fill, specifically in July and August.

Stecklein says the general rule of thumb is for each night during grain fill that temperatures stay at 70 degrees Fahrenheit or above, your corn crop will experience about a 1% yield loss in each 24-hour period.

What happens is the result of a lack of equilibrium between the process of photosynthesis during the day and then respiration at night.

“During the day, the plant is taking sunlight and carbon dioxide and making sugars. It’s creating energy,” Stecklein explains. “Overnight, you have respiration occurring. Respiration is using energy to repair cells, And the rate of these processes is very temperature dependent.”

When nighttime temperatures remain high, the rate of respiration dramatically increases. This means the plant burns through its energy reserves much faster.

Stecklein says that in July and August, parts of east-central Iowa had 15 nights that stayed at 70 degrees or greater.

“If you’re good at math, that means a 15% yield loss. If you had 300 bushels to lose at tassel, that brings you straight down to 255, bushels, just based on overnight temperatures,” she says.

4. Disease pressure reached unprecedented levels for some farmers. The big gorilla this season was southern rust, which took most Iowa farmers by surprise.

”Southern rust is the one that everybody is talking about, because it’s so aggressive and because, honestly, in Iowa, we were not prepared for how aggressive it was going to be,” Stecklein says.

Unlike tar spot, southern rust is not a disease that overwinters in residue. It must “blow in” from the South, and it also needs corn to infect to complete its life cycle. For those reasons, Stecklein would advise Iowa farmers to not make hybrid decisions for next year based on concerns for southern rust.

However, she would advise them to take tar spot into consideration as they evaluate which hybrids to plant in 2026.

“If you are going to spray [a fungicide], you’re going to be OK if you do choose a hybrid that’s susceptible, because there are some very good hybrids out there that aren’t super tolerant to tar spot. Make sure that you’re planning on at least making one fungicide pass at tassel. But if you will not spray two passes of fungicide, do not choose a hybrid that has a very poor tar spot rating, because if we get the weather that’s very conducive to tar spot, you’re going to lose some bushels,” she adds.

5. Phantom yield loss showed up at harvest. Based on phantom yield loss data, Stecklein says there’s about 2 bushels lost per percent of moisture. How that translates into a yield loss: if you like to harvest at 22% moisture but the crop is at 16% moisture when you finally combine it, you’re looking at a loss of 12 bushels per acre.

If you find yourself consistently harvesting corn at a drier level than you want, Stecklein would say it’s time to adjust your hybrid maturities. If phantom yield loss isn’t a consistent issue you face, then you’re probably OK to stick with your current maturities.

Her final advice for 2026: “I keep wanting to say that every year I learn something unique, but at the end of the day, my key takeaways from every year have almost always been the same: if you plan for failure and if you give up, you’re going to be met with failure. However, if you are persistent through hardships and manage according to those hardships, you’re setting yourself up for success.”

Watch Stecklein’s recent video, Corn 2025: What happened , for more insights on the east-central Iowa corn results.

5 Critical Insights From The Southern Rust Rampage In Midwest Corn

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 17:48:29 GMT

Northeast Iowa farmer Elliott Henderson sprayed a fungicide on part of his corn crop three times this season and nearly all of his crop twice, battling to break the chokehold of southern rust in his fields.

Henderson, who farms in Buchanan County, wasn’t alone in his struggle to contain the disease. Iowa State University (ISU) Extension estimates southern rust reached all 99 counties in the state.

Most corn growers were aware of the disease but hadn’t experienced the ruthless destruction it could cause.

For many, that changed this season.

The farmers Henderson routinely connects with are finding extreme yield losses now, as they start combining a corn crop that in many cases dried down and died prematurely. What occurred is common to southern rust – the disease pustules ruptured corn leaf surfaces, making it hard for plants to retain or regulate moisture.

“I made some calls around to see what guys are getting, and yields are down. I mean, we’re talking 30 to 60 bushels,” says Henderson. “We’re seeing guys with a 240-bushel APH, and they’re talking 180-bushel corn.”

An update on this field. The kernels are many but extremely small. The cob is almost rubbery. One ear doesn’t tell the full story, but this field did not handle southern rust well. #ISUCrops https://t.co/QDDtBWHa0r pic.twitter.com/fiYUboKN1E
— Meaghan Anderson (@mjanders1) September 12, 2025

Yield losses of up to 45% can occur from southern rust in severe cases, according to the Crop Protection Network (CPN).

Along with the yield loss, Iowa test weights are also taking a hit and could result in lower prices for growers. The official minimum test weight in the U.S. for No. 1 yellow corn is 56 lbs. per bushel and for No. 2 yellow corn is 54 lbs. per bushel, according to Purdue University Extension.

Henderson says he’s hearing farmers share test weight numbers well below those.

“We’re seeing lows in the 40s, some upper 40s, so it’s definitely being affected,” he says.

A Perfect Storm Of Disease Pressure
Plant health issues were the biggest challenge many corn growers in the Midwest encountered this season, Randy Dowdy contends.

“It was not a pollination issue. It was not a kernel development issue. We didn’t see the tight tassel wrap. It was disease pressure — that was by far the limiting factor for growers this year,” says Dowdy.

When he participated in the Pro Farmer Crop Tour in mid-August, Dowdy says he saw corn crops from Ohio to Iowa that were affected by multiple diseases. The four main ones were southern rust, gray leaf spot, northern corn leaf blight and tar spot — sometimes all four were on the same leaf in Iowa.

“Those growers that sprayed and stayed on it and understood that a fungicide couldn’t last but for 21 days at best, and made multiple applications, I think they’re going to reap the benefits,” says Dowdy in this week’s Breaking Barriers With R&D podcast.

You can watch this episode of the podcast on YouTube: Breaking Barriers with R&D: Late-Season Wins and Soil-First Strategies

The Crop Protection Network map shows where southern rust was confirmed in counties across the U.S. as of September 16. Notice how far north the disease traveled in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

(CPN)

Both Dowdy and David Hula, business partners in Total Acre , lament that many Midwest growers didn’t take a cue from their southern brethren and spray fungicides multiple times this season.

“Industry, in general, says if you spray at VT or tassel time, you can get by with one time. That is mostly accurate under a normal weather year,” Hula says. “But this year [some Midwest states] just had that explosion of southern rust, so they were dealing with a disease that’s historically not been a problem. You just had the environment for it.”

With growers beginning to plan what to do next season, Dowdy and Hula spent some time this week considering how growers can build an effective agronomic management plan for 2026.

Here are five of their key takeaways:

1. Formalize a plan to address disease (and pests, too).

“You have to stay proactive with your scouting and be willing to go with earlier fungicide or multiple applications, depending on what shows up,” Hula says.

In the process of being prepared to make multiple applications, keep in mind that you might not need all of them. While tar spot overwinters in stubble, southern rust doesn’t. The latter might not be a severe problem next season, as it is blows in from warmer climes.

Dowdy believes the weather system bringing southern rust to the Midwest this season originated in the Delta.

2025 Colfax County Nebraska Crop Tour results: 12 dryland fields, 207.5 bu. 2nd highest yield on record (2021 was 214). Stands were slightly lower than expected. Tar Spot lighter than expected. Southern Rust probably will reduce this yield. #25croptour pic.twitter.com/72VZCFMdZQ
— Chris Clausen (@ChrisClausen34) September 11, 2025

“Let’s face it, the incubator for you was the fact that you were wet and then had high, nighttime temperatures. It was hot, and you had corn everywhere, and you had a perfect environment,” he says.

Henderson agrees, noting moisture at the wrong time and too much heat were factors.

“We had a lot of heat right after pollination into that blister stage. We were stacking GDUs up really fast on that early-planted corn,” he recalls. “I do think some of this later planted corn is probably going to have a better experience finishing out.”

2. Work with like-minded farmers, agronomists and industry experts.

Be aware of disease pressure that is around you or headed in your direction by tapping into a local agronomist or groups such as the Crop Protection Network, and stay abreast of what’s happening in other regions.

“Everybody here is on pins and needles about southern rust every season, and we are constantly getting feedback from county [Extension] agents and industry, who are pushing the information out to the farmer, because everybody is well aware of the ramifications of southern rust,” Dowdy says.

Henderson, who works with Dowdy and Hula via their Total Acre program, also has a network of farmers in Iowa that he connects with on a regular basis.

“It’s a network of dozens of us farmers that call each other, bounce ideas off each other,” he says. “The things we’re talking about are often time-sensitive. It can be a daily thing.”

3. Understand how to use fungicides for maximum ROI, if you have given them little consideration in the past.

“It’s all about coverage,” Dowdy says. “Drone applications can be fine, but no matter what you do, if a guy is spraying two to three gallons, and you compare it to a ground rig spraying 15 to 25 gallons, I mean, there’s just no comparison in that coverage.”

Another aspect of coverage, Hula adds, is making sure the fungicide gets into the plant canopy far enough to have the desired effect.

“Fungicides have a tendency to work from the leaf they’ve come in contact with and move up,” Hula says. “So, if you’re trying to protect at least that ear leaf – and I like to protect the leaf opposite and below the ear – you’ve got to get penetration with that product.”

For a drone application, Hula says growers might have to spend a couple extra dollars to get sufficient volume for the product to get down below the canopy.

“If that’s what needs to be done, let’s do it,” he encourages. “If I’m spending $30 or more an acre, then I want to at least have the success that I’m paying for.”

4. Use products labelled for the disease issue you face.

That sounds like a no brainer, but in the heat of battle the wrong product can get applied, or you can select a product that isn’t up to the task.

With a tough disease like southern rust or tar spot, using newer chemistries with more than one active ingredient is also a plus.

5. Stay with your crop throughout the season; don’t walk away.

Today’s corn genetics tend to have more back-end potential to add yield through kernel fill.

It’s a key reason to evaluate what a fungicide application can do for a crop that’s advanced into one of the later reproductive stages, say Hula and Dowdy.

Brian Herbek, who farms near DeWeese, Neb., has leaned into their advice the past few years.

“I found out a couple of years ago, there’s a lot of hidden yield out there that a lot of us leave on the table,” Herbek reports.

What he learned from Hula and Dowdy is corn has the genetic ability – some hybrids more so than others – to pack starch into its kernels late-season to create higher test weights.

He scouts corn late-season to decide where to make “the finishing pass,” an application of fungicide or nutrients or some combination of the two.

“It’s not for every field. I’ll tell everybody that right now, there are certain fields that don’t deserve that attention,” Herbek says. “But if you know what you’re looking for, and you have that potential, that application does makes sense, but you’ve really got to know what’s out in your field.”

Dowdy and Hula share additional thoughts on how farmers can improve next season’s corn crop in the face of disease pressure in the latest edition of their Breaking Barriers With R&D podcast on Farm Journal TV and YouTube .

More ideas and recommendations are available from the two corn yield champions on the Tuesday morning edition of AgriTalk with Host Chip Flory. Catch their discussion here:

Your next read: Farmer Finds A Silver Bullet For High Corn Yields

Frost Forecast Threatens Corn And Soybeans This Week

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 11:32:47 GMT

Frost isn’t a four-letter word, but it sure seems like one at this point in the growing season, when corn and soybeans are packing on starch and finalizing yield.

Brett Walts, meteorologist with BAMWX.com, predicts a potential frost for multiple days now for parts of the north-central U.S. and southern Canada. He says this is the earliest he has ever forecast freezing temperatures.

“Much of North Dakota is under that risk, and northern parts of Minnesota as well. For central Wisconsin I wouldn’t 100% roll out the risk in outlying and low-lying areas, even into parts of South Dakota and southern Minnesota,” Walts tells Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk.

We continued to be concern about frost risks in the N. Plains and Upper-Midwest later this week into the weekend.

Latest blend forecast for Thursday, Saturday and Sunday indicate multi-day risk and *typically* these trend cooler with time. pic.twitter.com/rarcKEGgCK
— BAM Weather (@bam_weather) September 2, 2025

A corn-killing freeze occurs when temperatures dip to 32 degrees Fahrenheit for four hours or 28 degrees for minutes, according to an online article by University of Minnesota Extension. A killing freeze can still happen with temperatures above 32, especially in low and unprotected areas when there’s no wind.

How much corn yield could be lost to freeze is tough to predict, but it could be significant, according to Troy Deutmeyer, Pioneer field agronomist.

“It is extremely difficult to predict but corn around half-milk line that dies will have yields cut around 10% according to older studies. With today’s late-season grain fill and kernel flex I feel the number is closer to 15%,” he says in a post to X. See his full comments below.

How much yield will premature death in my corn cut yield???

It is extremely difficult to predict but corn around half milk line that dies will have yields cut around 10% according to older studies. With today's late season grain fill and kernel flex I feel the number is closer… pic.twitter.com/U97lfOU6uy
— Pioneer Troy (@deutmeyer_troy) September 2, 2025

“Between the fourth [of September] and the eighth, it’s going to be pretty consistently down into the 30s and 40s for temperature lows in that region,” Walts says.

Timing-wise, Walts anticipates the frost threat is a multi-day risk, moving in by late tonight or early Thursday and staying through Sunday.

Corn Is Vulnerable In Cold, Wet Conditions

“We’d talked about how the corn crop needs some cooler temperatures, but these are not the kind of cooler temperatures we were talking about, that’s for sure – especially up in North Dakota, northern South Dakota, into central Minnesota,” Flory says.

Freeze damage in corn near Nicollet, Minn., that occurred Sept. 13, 2014. Notice how the corn leaves appear water-soaked.

(University of Minnesota Extension)

“There’s a lot of corn up there that could still benefit from a lot more growing season,” he adds “If we get into this prolonged period ofcold temperatures, even if we don’t see a frost, it can have a negative impact on the yield potential up there. No question about that.”

Walts says as the calendar moves past Sept. 10, temperatures will moderate for several days, but he doesn’t expect the warming trend to stay. Instead, he says it will be short-lived, with another cold front arriving in the same region around September 15.

Rain Could Add To The Frost Problem

Walts adds there is the likelihood that some of the areas under the frost watch could endure bouts of rain, though he anticipates they will be patchy.

“It’s going to be these messy, scattered showers and storms along these fronts,” he notes. “I would say areas that could pick up maybe more than a half an inch of rain will be across Minnesota, maybe northern parts of Iowa. But I think the further south and east you go across Illinois and Indiana, eastern Missouri, the messier that it is, and more likely some areas will be skipped over.”

Some of the skipped over regions include the far Northwest and West, both of which are likely to remain rain-free over the next week, Walts adds.

His complete forecast is available on AgriTalk here:

Your next read: Southern Rust Set To Take Big Bite Out Of Midwest Corn Crop?

How Pro Farmer 2025 Crop Estimates Compare and Contrast With USDA Expectations

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 20:32:51 GMT

As more than 100 crop scouts traversed dirt roads and two-lane highways, stopping dozens of times to sample corn and soybeans in seven Midwest states, they gathered insights to answer the question on many farmers’ minds this week: How would the Pro Farmer estimates compare to the numbers USDA-NASS released August 12?

The answer: Pro Farmer found a big corn crop but one that’s currently positioned to average 182.7 bu. per acre – 6.1 bu. below USDA’s 188.8 bu. projection.

“When we put the yield estimate out, it comes with a plus or minus 1% for corn and a plus or minus 2% for soybeans, and that’s because we know things can change yet,” says Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk and lead scout on the western leg of the tour.

“The other thing is the yield models that we use give us a range, and then, based on conditions, we can move within that range with the yield estimate that we’re going to pull,” he adds.

With that perspective in play, here’s how the Pro Farmer and USDA estimates compare:

Pro Farmer Corn Estimate (+-1%): 16.042 to 16.366 billion bushels; 180.9 to 184.5 bu. per acre average
USDA Corn Estimate: 16.7 billion bushels; 188.8 bu. per acre average

(ProFarmer)

Disease Pressure Across The Midwest Is Concerning
The 2025 growing season has been marred by heavy disease pressure in many of the corn and soybean crops Pro Farmer scouts evaluated this week.

It was an issue Lane Akre says showed up repeatedly in corn and soybean fields from the get-go, as tour scouts fanned out to check 2,000-plus fields across seven states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota.

“We know disease can speed up the maturation of plants, making it difficult to keep them healthy long enough for optimal grain fill before harvest,” says Akre, Pro Farmer Economist and lead scout on the eastern leg of the tour. “We are concerned diseases like southern rust and tar spot could negatively impact corn yields in some of these states during the next few weeks.”

Soybeans Could Be the Star of the Season
USDA’s August estimate for the national soybean yield average is just slightly above what Pro Farmer scouts found in fields this week. Pro Farmer places the soybean yield average at 53.0 bu. per acre, with a total crop size of 4.246 billion bushels

By comparison, USDA expects soybeans to average a record high 53.6 bu. per acre, with a total crop of 4.29 billion bushels.

Pro Farmer Soybean Estimate (+-2%): 4.161 to 4.330 billion bushels; 51.9 to 54.1 bu. per acre

“One of the questions heading into the tour was whether the soybean crop could live up to the lofty expectations a lot of people have for it, and we found that it does,” Akre says. “There’s a massive crop out there in fields. We’re just hoping it can hold on until harvest – and outpace the disease pressure out there – to deliver on those big yields.”

Corn and Soybean Yield Summaries
Pro Farmer and AgWeb reported extensively throughout the tour — the highs and lows of each crop in each of the seven states. Here are summaries from each state. Click on the links to learn more details.

Illinois: Scouts reported an Illinois corn crop that looked lush from the road, but once they picked ears and pulled back husks, most described finding an average to above-average crop – not the record yield estimate USDA reported on August 12.

“The Illinois corn crop just wasn’t what we’d hoped,” Akre says. “USDA is anticipating a 1.7% jump from a year ago, and we’re actually down 2.2%.”

Indiana: Wet conditions from rain, fog and heavy due is causing some unevenness in Indiana corn and soybeans. Still, the state’s corn crop posted a yield number that came in 3.35% higher than its 2024 number.

From disease pressure to too much rain, some scouts found a solid soybean crop in Indiana, while other routes exposed extreme variability. Overall pod count numbers were down 2.30% from 2024.

Iowa: Scouts spent two days in the state gathering dozens of samples to gain insights and project yield estimates. Despite challenges from disease pressure, scouts reported a big corn crop with significant potential. Their estimates put the Iowa crop up 2.93% over 2024, and up 6.4% versus the three-year average.

“This Iowa crop has a very, very strong ear count, great grain inches — just a very consistent equation putting that corn yield together,” reports Emily Flory Carolan, Pro Farmer Crop Tour data consultant.

For soybeans, scouts found a massive crop, up 5.49% in the number of pods as compared to the 2024 crop.

Minnesota: The corn crop in Minnesota is currently heading for a record yield this season, if it can outpace disease pressure. Scouts recorded the longest grain inches in the corn there that have ever been measured in the tour’s history.

“That’s definitely what pulled up that yield average for us,” Carolan says.

Soybeans also show tremendous yield potential in Minnesota. Pod counts were up 20.38% this week versus 2024 counts, and up 19.9% versus the three-year average.

Nebraska: Adequate moisture is pulling up corn yields in the state this season, with some tour routes reporting 8% to 10% increases compared to 2024 and 2023. The much-improved corn yield estimates were a welcomed change, scouts say, after seeing corn there struggle in two back-to-back years of drought.

Soybeans also are promising big yield results, with pod counts up 15.0% this week over the 2024 estimate.

Ohio: Heavy rains last spring meant many farmers either got a late start to the growing season or they had to replant fields. The moisture extremes early on have resulted in considerable variability in fields from one end of the state to the other. Still, scouts say the Ohio crop has solid corn yield potential overall, citing possible records along some Pro Farmer Crop Tour routes.

The soybean pod factory in Ohio is going strong – with numbers up 4.66% this season over 2024 – but scouts caution a lack of late-season moisture is concerning. More rain is needed for the soybean crop there to finish well.

South Dakota: Based on USDA’s August crop estimates, scouts knew the possibility was there to uncover a big crop in South Dakota. Field estimates show record yield potential is possible , especially due to ample moisture this year that’s supported growth and development.

Soybeans might be an even better story in South Dakota this year. Pod counts came in at 15.9% above last year’s tour and well above the three-year average of 970.1 pods.

For more insights from the 2025 Pro Farmer Crop Tour:

Watch On-Demand: Pro Farmer Crop Tour Day 4 Results from Iowa and Minnesota

Watch On-Demand: Pro Farmer Crop Tour Day 3 Results from Illinois and Iowa

Watch On-Demand: Pro Farmer Crop Tour Day 2 Results from Indiana and Nebraska

Watch On-Demand: Pro Farmer Crop Tour Day 1 Results from Ohio and South Dakota

R5 Growth Stage Holds Hidden Yield Potential

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 16:08:48 GMT

As your corn crop turns the last corner of the 2025 growing season and heads for the finish line and harvest, there is still a lot of potential yield to be made or lost in the process.

The R5 growth stage (dent) – the next to last growth stage for corn – is one of those key times in the season where your management practices and Mother Nature’s cooperation up to that point can influence harvest outcomes.

Dan Quinn, Purdue University Extension corn specialist, explains the reason: kernel dry matter content in a corn crop at the beginning of R5 is only at roughly 45% of the eventual final accumulation.

Another way to look at that – there is still up to 55% of the kernel dry weight left to be accumulated by the crop, starch that can contribute significantly to grain fill and yield.

“Therefore, if significant environmental stress (drought, nutrient deficiency, etc.) were to occur during beginning R5, significant yield losses can still occur,” Quinn writes in this online article .

Many of the newer hybrids seed companies have developed are designed to add bushels by increasing the amount of starch in kernels, according to Ken Ferrie Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

“That’s one way we obtain yield increases without raising populations,” Ferrie says.

Keying Into The R5 Growth Stage
Michigan farmer Nathan Baker addresses the importance of R5, in his most recent video, posted to YouTube on Monday .

In the video (starting at about 24 mintues), Baker is evaluating his early-April planted corn, which is starting to reach dent (R5). Of his entire 2025 crop, he says it is the most advanced field of corn he has, noting there is some disease pressure present.

“That is northern corn leaf blight. You can see it started with a lesion here, and it has spread. There’s another one. I don’t like to see that…but there’s nothing drastic,” Baker says, pointing to some damaged areas on a corn leaf.

Baker says he used fungicide to rein-in disease pressure. In some fields, he made two applications.

(Nathan Baker)

Knowing the importance of late-season grain fill is a key reason Baker says he made the investment in applying a foliar fungicide some weeks earlier.

“That’s why it’s important that we … take care of these plants late in the season and keep packing that starch in there, giving it all the nutrients and the things that it needs. It’s why I still really, really want some rain, because we can still use it to help make this corn crop better,” he says.

Baker gives a shout out to his AgriGold agronomist, Wayde Looker, for the insights he learned about the R5 growth stage.

Look For The Milk Line In Kernels
As corn moves into the R5 stage, you can start to see a distinct line near the top of kernels, which is the milk line. This line indicates the division between the dry and liquid material in the kernel.

The R5 growth stage in corn can occur approximately 30 – 40 days following silking and is defined when nearly all kernels are ‘dented’ at the crown of the kernel and hard starch or solid endosperm has begun to form.

(Dan Quinn, Purdue University Extension Corn Specialist)

As kernels harden, the line moves from the top of the kernel down to where the base attaches to the cob. Keeping an eye on the milk line’s progression is useful to corn growers who cut crop for silage or are trying to determine when to stop irrigating. It’s also helpful for growers trying to determine how much time is left before the corn reaches maturity and will be ready to combine.

Quinn says corn moves through the early part of R5 quickly and then slows as it nears physiological maturity (R6, black layer). Overall, from the beginning of R5 to maturity is about 33 days:

3 days — from the start of R5 to the quarter milk line stage
6 days — from quarter to half milk line
10 days — from half to three-quarters milk line
14 days — from three-quarters milk line to black layer

Actual time to black layer may vary depending upon the hybrid and the environment. However, this is a guide that lets you know what to expect and help you plan for harvest, Quinn says.

Your next read: Understanding Ear Flex

Ken Ferrie: Central Illinois Corn Yields Look Close To 5-Year Average

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:32:32 GMT

Disease pressure is ramping up in central Illinois corn but the crops have widely varying degrees of infection, according to Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

The biggest issues area growers are dealing with now are tar spot, southern rust and some northern leaf blight. Some farmers are responding by making a second fungicide application, while others are sitting tight, given the tough economic climate.

Understanding it’s a tough call on whether a fungicide application will pay for itself, Ferrie tells growers to stay the course with their fields and make crop evaluations so they can adjust yield expectations and marketing decisions, if need be.

“I’m out here looking at these fields every day, and each one’s kind of its own surprise,” he says.

Corn Yield Potential Is Still Solid
Ferrie recalls that last season he saw a lot of central Illinois fields come in at harvest with 300-plus bushel yields. That’s not his expectation this season, though he thinks farmers could still see an above-average crop depending on what happens during the next few weeks.

“My highest yield estimate so far this season has been 297 bushels, dividing by 80. So there’s definitely a difference in what we’re yield-checking here in central Illinois compared to a year ago,” he says.

“If we compare it to the five-year average, we’re probably going to be satisfied. If we compare it to last year, we could be disappointed,” he adds.

Check Disease Tolerance Scores By Hybrid
Where hybrids had rain in July, Ferrie is seeing tar spot explode in the ear zone. With southern rust, the disease is more scattered in fields, with some more heavily infected by the disease than others.

Matt Duesterhaus is more concerned currently with southern rust in western Illinois, where he’s based, though he expects tar spot could come on stronger in a couple of weeks. He tells farmers hybrid susceptibility needs to be a consideration in the decision whether to spray a fungicide now.

“Once we get from beginning dent into full dent, it’s pretty hard to make a fungicide pay unless you’ve got a susceptible hybrid, one that makes a lot of its yield in kernel depth. So we’ve got to pay attention to those hybrid ratings,” says Duesterhaus, field research agronomist for Crop-Tech Consulting.

He encourages farmers to check their hybrid scores for tolerance to diseases they identify in their specific fields and then weigh the decision whether to make a fungicide application now.

“The tolerance gives you a starting point on scouting,” Duesterhaus says. “Depending on the tolerance, southern rust can take down one hybrid to where you’ll be picking up [combining] down corn, versus in the next hybrid, it might only be a 10- or 20-bushel hit.”

Along with evaluating disease tolerance in hybrids, Ferrie says to consider whether your hybrids are D hybrids—those that count on depth of kernel fill to get their yield punch.

“Their depth of kernel comes at the end of grain fill — the last half of the 60 or so days after pollination through black layer,” Ferrie explains. “They need to stay green as long as possible and finish the season strong. Many new hybrids are D types.”

Check out Ferrie’s latest episode of Boots In The Field podcast for more agronomic insights and recommendations on how to finish strong this season:

Your next read: Analyst Flags Potential Overshoot in Corn Yield Estimate And Why It Matters

Silver Linings: Farmers Share What’s Gone Right & Wrong This Season

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 16:41:39 GMT

What you can’t hear, reading this brief article, is the laughter.

In some cases the farmers attending this year’s Farm Journal Corn & Soybean College were laughing because the stories others in the room were telling were just downright funny.

In other cases, it was the laughter of commiseration – the ‘I understand-what-you-are-going-through’ kinds of chuckles.

Either way, the camaraderie was cathartic. It lifted spirits, gave encouragement and reminded this group of farmers they were with people who understood their worries but were doing their darnedest to press on and find silver linings in a year marked by dismal markets.

Below are comments from five different farmers who shared how their growing season is going. I hope you’ll be able to relate to some of their experiences:

East-central Iowa: “We’re just sitting in a pocket that’s had ample rain. Planting went well. The corn crop looked fabulous the moment it came out of the ground, and it just hasn’t looked back. I think it’s going to be a whopper.”

Northern Illinois: “I’ve got several neighbors coming up and saying mine’s the best crop they’ve seen, but we’ve been blessed with rain. I’ve got cattle in a (feedyard) so having extra rain isn’t always the greatest thing for that, but it is what it is.”

Southwestern Ontario, Canada: “It was a cool, wet spring. Most of our corn took at least three weeks to get out of the ground. We’re just starting to tassel now here (in late July). The crop is very uneven. There was a lot of burn, a lot of urea was put on 4-foot-tall corn. We ran out of 28% and 32% UAN. People bought it in October, and it never showed up.”

Eastern Oregon/central Washington. “We pretty much irrigate everything. If you’d look at the Google Earth map, everything you see brown is dryland wheat and everything you see that’s green is irrigation. I grow primarily fresh market potatoes. The corn’s our rotation. Everything we do, onions, alfalfa, etc., is irrigated. We don’t (have) rain. We’ll turn the switch on and start pumping. It’s costly. Hearing you guys talk about two, three inches of rain, I’d love to have it, but it never comes.”

Northeast Kansas: “Everything has been like perfect (conditions) for our corn all the way through, so far. We’ll see if that carries out to yield, but right now the corn looks fabulous. 2014 was our best crop ever, and we think we’re going to be right there this year, if things continue the way they have.”

Also, check out the brief video I did with two growers during the event. I appreciated their willingness to share their thoughts on what’s gone right for them this season. They did their best to share some words of encouragement for anyone who’s watching. My sincere thanks – Pat Gannon, Colfax, Iowa, and Doug Bontekoe, Marion, Michigan – for letting me talk with you between sessions.

Your next read: Ready For What’s Next: How An Iowa Farmer Survived the ‘80s Farm Crisis and Now Invests In Others

National Corn Yield Predictions Are Trending Higher Thanks To Summer Moisture

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 21:36:20 GMT

Six months ago, no one saw this coming – abundant rainfall and then some for the 2025 growing season throughout much of the Corn Belt.

“It has been six years since we’ve seen a rainfall growing season map like what we have seen for 2025,” says Brad Rippey, USDA agricultural meteorologist.

“You have to go back to 2019, which was the year of too much rain. This year, if anything, it’s just about perfect,” says Rippey, who describes this summer as “almost like a Goldilocks growing season, to date.”

(NOAA-National Weather Service)

Three Months Of Moisture, And Counting
The percent of normal precipitation in the U.S. May through July shows above-average moisture levels across key corn and soybean production areas. Many states recorded at least 90% of their normal precipitation on the low end and upwards of 150% of their normal precipitation levels on the high end.

“You have a pretty consistent pattern everywhere east of the Rockies – look at all the greens and blues on the map – pockets of wetness. Certainly, just about everybody from the Plains eastward is looking at adequate to abundant moisture,” Rippey shared with Clinton Griffiths during the U.S. Farm Report.

(USDA-NASS)

The abundant moisture is helping fuel higher corn quality levels. USDA reports the corn crop nationally is at 73% in good too excellent condition – a 5% increase over this same time in 2024.

That rating is likely to stand going into the August 12 USDA-NASS Crop Production report, which the agency will conduct by satellite imagery.

“I know corn conditions and crop conditions in general, as reported by USDA-NASS, are not the end all in the conversation. It really matters when they go out into the fields and look – but look at that Iowa number of 87% good to excellent,” Rippey says.

He believes the current stats in combination with the results from USDA’s satellite imagery reviews will drive average yield estimate numbers for corn higher.

“What they’re going to see is an awfully good-looking corn crop,” Mark Schultz, chief market analyst for Northstar Commodity, told Michelle Rook during U.S. Farm Report.

“The question gets to be, do they bump it immediately – up to 184, 185, something like that? I would say it’s probably what we’re trying to trade into the market at the present time,” Schultz says. “That appears to be where most of the privates are going to into that category. You know, they’re not going to see anything terrible, that’s for sure.”

Corn Growth Heads Into The Home Stretch
Insights from USDA data provide some perspective on just how well this year’s corn crop is shaping up as the growing season turns the corner and heads for the finish line.

(USDA-NASS)

“You have to go all the way back to 2016 to see a higher crop condition index for corn this time in the growing season,” Rippey reports.

A map showing production outcomes for nearly the past decade illustrates how 2025 ranks near the top of the pack for corn crop conditions.

“The 2015, 16, 17, 18 seasons were all above-trend yields for corn, and the only year we have been above trend since then – and just barely – was 2021,” he says.

Moisture conditions the past few years have run to the dry side, a problem many mainstream meteorologists predicted would repeat this growing season.

“We found out the hard way last year that late summer dryness can take a toll on the crop, and we did come down off of some of that yield potential,” Rippey recalls.

The two key questions now are how will the 2025 corn crop finish out the growing season, and what will Mother Nature do between now and harvest?

(NOAA National Weather Service)

According to the National Weather Service, farmers in the Eastern Corn Belt will potentially see more moisture. There are also indications below-normal rainfall and drier conditions will take root in parts of the western Corn Belt in the weeks ahead, starting sometime this month.

“But if that happens beyond the month of August, there is not going to be a significant impact on corn or soybeans,” Rippey predicts. “All indications are for bumper crops for just about everywhere in the country, except Montana and points West.”

Your next read: Funds Sell Corn and Soybeans on Weather and Record Yields

Recent Rains Spell Trouble for Corn – What Farmers Need to Know Now

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 15:44:44 GMT

Rain makes grain is a common refrain among corn growers, and it’s generally true. But this year, wet conditions at the wrong time have contributed to poor pollination in affected corn crops, says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, based in central Illinois.

“I’m seeing yield losses of 15- to 40-bushel hits in affected fields,” he says.

This latest problem in corn differs from the issue of overly tight tassel wrap that Farm Journal editors have been reporting on the past few weeks – and has nothing to do with corn genetics.

Moisture At The Wrong Time
This latest issue has to do with farmers having three or four consecutive days of heavy fog and rainfall causing wet conditions in fields. The wet conditions prevented corn pollen sacks from opening on time, essentially interrupting the pollination process.

Ferrie shares what happened and what farmers can look for in this brief video:

Once weather conditions improved, Ferrie says corn crops were able to pollinate but the damage was already done.

“It caused some significant issues with our kernel set,” says Ferrie.

He notes that the issue occurred across parts of the Midwest last week, where pollination should have been well underway or completed. Affected areas included parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota.

Farmers were taking to various social media sites earlier this week to talk about the impact of too much moisture. Some were taking the issue in stride:

Some growers have maintained their sense of humor and are looking ahead to harvest.

(AgTalk)

How To Identify This Pollination Problem In Fields
Farmers who are out checking their corn need to look for ears that have an inch or so of whitish colored kernels, while the bulk of the ear/kernels are yellow in color. In most cases, you will see an abrupt line on the tip of the ear where the kernels go from yellow to white.

“This white tip will abort when the base of that ear reaches a certain maturity, it’s almost impossible to hold it,” Ferrie says. “You can tell when the kernels lose their turgor pressure, they look slightly deflated.”

Farmers checking fields will see the pollinating tips on corn are present one day and gone the next. The loss is abrupt.

“It’s not a gradual pullback. It’s all of a sudden just gone,” Ferrie says. “So if you saw a yellow base with white tips last week, you need to go back and check for that tip abortion.”

In central Illinois, the ear tip abortion is happening in late-April planted corn that was trying to pollinate during rainy days or days with heavy fog. In addition, Ferrie notes that some of the May 1 corn planted in central Illinois had white butts on ears, meaning the fog or rain occurred at the end of the pollination cycle.

“By scouting those fields, you can see when the rain or fog came in and affected the pollination,” he says.

Field Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Farmers are calling Ferrie now to ask why their corn plants that look great from the road are blowing the tips off ears.

“In this case no one did anything wrong; it was nothing but the result of bad luck and the timing of fog and moisture,” he says.

He encourages farmers to get out and scout fields, and identify whether this particular problem is in their fields.

“It’s important to learn that now rather than trying to diagnose it later. By harvest, these tips will dry up and then shrivel down, and that will make it harder to diagnose what actually happened out here,” he explains. “Checking your fields and plots now and recording this will help explain some unexpected yield swings this fall.”

Look Forward And Plan Your Next Move
Ferrie says if the cloudy weather continues, some corn crops could throw their tips as a result of poor photosynthetic processes. In addition, wet, cloudy conditions at this point sets the stage for ear molds because of the wet silks.

“Let’s keep an eye on those corn-on-corn fields, especially, as we may need to move harvest up to stay ahead of molds and insect pressures,” he advises.

One final recommendation for growers who are spraying: Ferrie says if you’re going by air with applications, be sure and keep the swath width tight. A narrow swath ensures that the product is applied evenly, avoiding gaps or overlaps in coverage, and minimizing the opportunity for drift.

“There will be some surprises this fall, so let’s keep scouting. We have 40 to 60 days left until harvest,” he adds.

Ferrie offers more insights on what farmers need to be thinking about now, as the corn growing season moves into the home stretch, in his latest Boots In The Field podcast:

Your next read: Farmers Facing Tough Weeds In Soybeans Are Pushing The Herbicide Envelope

Be Prepared: Intense Storm Cluster With 75+ MPH Winds Working Through Upper Midwest Monday Evening

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 19:51:00 GMT

A powerful cluster of storms is forming in the Upper Midwest with a chance for crop-damaging winds and potential tornados in central South and North Dakota as well as southwestern Minnesota, warns The National Weather Service and meteorologist Bret Walts with BAMWX.com.

Walts expects the cluster will release a lot of wind energy this afternoon and this evening as it gathers steam moving east through the upper Great Plains. It could even intensify into a rare derecho storm with hurricane force winds.

UPDATE: The Weather Channel is now reporting a “derecho is likely to strike the Northern Plains.”

“We’ve got a stronger (atmospheric) jet stream moving in with a lot of instability in place still with the heat and humidity across parts of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota,” he says.

Walts is paying close attention to how quickly the individual storm cells merge together. He says the faster that formation occurs the more intense the storm has the potential to become.

7/28/25: Intense severe storms are expected to form this afternoon in SD and spread southeastward into MN and IA through tonight. Swaths of damaging winds, potentially 75-90 mph, are the main concern. Be prepared to take action if watches and warnings are issued for your area. pic.twitter.com/wf2rH7eUdD
— NWS Storm Prediction Center (@NWSSPC) July 28, 2025

Walts forecasts the timing as 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. CT for parts of South and North Dakota, while 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. would be the time frame for the most intense winds in northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota.

“If that initial cell to the north shoots out of a lot of boundaries it could lead to the setup becoming a little bit messier,” Walts says. “We’ll know by five or six o’clock that if this thing is not getting organized, then we have an idea it is not going to be that intense. But I don’t anticipate that happening because the environment is very, very unstable and there’s a lot of wind energy. That combination this time of the year normally is not a good thing.”

NOAA says it expects these storms will move very quickly, and it is important to take action when warnings are issued locally. Do not wait until you see or hear signs of a strong storm because by that time it might be too late.

Your Next Read: Insights From Seed Companies on Tackling Tassel Wrap Challenges

Searing Temperatures In Store For the Week

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 20:31:32 GMT

Something is missing in eastern Nebraska that Dave Warner says is usually available in abundance – and then some – on his farm in mid-July: sunshine and dry weather conditions. Warner refuses to complain, though, given how dry his soils were at corn planting time in May. Still, he would be happy if Mother Nature would ease up on the moisture deliveries just a tad.

“We’ve had a lot of rain; in the last 30 days, we probably had 18.5 inches. We had an inch overnight again last night,” he said on Thursday. “We are inundated with moisture.”

Weather Outlook Just Ahead

Warner’s weather scenario might or might not change this weekend, given his area is on the cusp of a new forecast. It’s one meteorologists believe will deliver high temperatures and dry conditions to parts of the central Plains, the Upper Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic by Tuesday.

(NOAA)

But first, the National Weather Service (NWS) says those regions will have to endure strong to severe thunderstorms and heavy rains this weekend. Then, those regions will see a heat dome start to build.

“We are keeping a very, very close eye on a heat dome that will be building up after this weekend,” says Meteorologist Jack Van Meter. “It’s going all the way through Wednesday, bringing sweltering hot temperatures to most.”

(BAM Weather on X, formerly Twitter)

Jonathan Erdman, senior meteorologist at weather.com, says temperatures could reach dangerously high, searing levels next week. He says, in summary:

By mid-week, temperatures in the 90s will have spread from the South into the lower Midwest. By late in the week, at least some 90s are possible in the Northeast.

Parts of the South could see triple-digit highs for several days in a row, including Texas, Oklahoma, northern Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri.

Overnight lows in the middle to upper 70s will become increasingly common as the heat wave builds. That won’t allow much heat relief at night.

Michael Clark, with BAM Weather, says he has concerns about a lack of moisture in three states, in particular.

“If there’s a spot where we want to talk about there needing to be some moisture, it is Illinois, Indiana and Michigan,” he told U.S. Farm Report’s Tyne Morgan this past week. “They are running about 25% to 50% of the normal. Despite what anyone is saying right now, it needs to rain there.”

Warmer nighttime lows are not particularly ideal for corn production, notes Clark. But he offers farmers some encouragement as he evaluates the potential impact of current weather trends on yield projections.

“In my opinion, we are tracking close to three years – 2005, 2021 and 2024. In 2005 and 2021 we had above-trend yields, and 2024 was very big,” he says, adding for 2025: “Indications are the weather is doing what it needs to do for a very large crop to come from it overall.”

Your next read: Grains Surge Friday: Was it Weather and Did it Bottom the Market?

Put On Your Scouting Hat: Check for Southern Rust in Corn and White Mold in Soybeans

Thu, 17 Jul 2025 19:37:08 GMT

Significant disease pressure is showing up in corn and soybeans earlier this summer than what Daren Mueller saw in 2024 crops. The Iowa State University plant pathologist says the early onset of disease pressure he has seen in Iowa – southern rust in corn, and sudden death syndrome (SDS) and white mold in soybeans – is concerning.

While he is closely tracking diseases in soybeans, he says there is “worse news” about the diseases showing up in corn.

“We actually are seeing a lot of southern rust in Iowa already. That is the one thing that I’m probably the most nervous about. I think we’ve found it in six or seven counties now,” he says.

Southern rust has been confirmed in at least 14 states. In Iowa, there’s a band of the disease that stretches east to west across the state, says Daren Mueller, Iowa State University pathologist.

(Crop Protection Network)

Along with Iowa, the Crop Protection Network (CPN) has confirmed southern rust in at least 13 other states – including Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska – and a “probable” finding in Indiana.

Southern rust can be difficult to distinguish from common rust .

While both are fungal diseases that affect corn and share similar symptoms, they have distinct characteristics. Common rust tends to favor cooler, wetter conditions, while southern rust prefers warmer, humid weather.

Southern rust can also be more aggressive and potentially more yield-damaging than common rust, especially in later planted fields.

“Southern rust likes heat, and we don’t have good levels of resistance. And it can move very, very quickly through a cornfield,” Mueller told AgriTalk Host Chip Flory on Thursday. CPN reports yield losses up to 45% have been reported with severe infections.

“Last year was the first year in a long time where we really had to deal with southern rust, and we’re finding it about 10 days earlier than last year.”

The good news in Iowa, so far: the incidence (number of plants affected) and severity (area of leaf diseased) are low, adds Alison Robertson, Iowa State professor of plant pathology and microbiology in an online article she posted on Thursday.

Mueller is encouraging farmers to get out and scout for southern rust now, so they can take action to address the disease.

“In a year like this, if we catch a couple more rains like we’re supposed to in the next week or so, and this inoculum is out there, a timely fungicide application is going to be very beneficial,” he says.

The Crop Protection Network, a multi-state Extension resource, offers a new mapping tool called Crop Lookout farmers can reference to identify various diseases and their locations.

“If you just click on that, there’s a couple of hot links on that map for tar spot and southern rust. When we find new spots of disease, it’s updated in real time,” Mueller says.

Speaking of tar spot, Mueller says the disease can still take a huge toll on corn, but that farmers are learning how to deal more effectively with the disease.

“I think we’re getting more used to tar spot, and I think people aren’t panicking as much,” he says.

Soybean Diseases Showed Up Early This Season, Too

Mueller says he found SDS and white mold (also known as Sclerotinia stem rot) in soybeans in mid-July.

“That was about a month earlier than what we want,” says Mueller, who serves as the coordinator of the Iowa State integrated pest management program. “The fact that (SDS) was showing up a good month in advance, it has us a little nervous.”

SDS is most severe when soybeans are planted in cool, wet soils and has delayed emergence – conditions that were prevalent this past spring in parts of Iowa and further into the East and Southeast.

Severe SDS can result in yield losses greater than 50%, according to University of Minnesota Extension.

To address SDS, there’s no curative action farmers can take, but Mueller offers one action farmers can take to address the problem.

“You get your pad and paper out and you take notes in the field. Record what varieties you selected, what seed treatments you put down. That’s all valuable information for the next time you plant soybeans,” he says.

This is an important action because key soybean planting states, like Iowa, have had three or more years of fairly dry weather in the latter half of the summer, so crop advisers and farmers have little data on which of the newer varieties perform best in the face of SDS.

“Use it to your advantage to just collect the data,” Mueller advises.

For white mold, Mueller says farmers can still apply a fungicide in many cases and get enough of a response to warrant the cost of treatment.

“We’re still, early enough, you can get a fungicide out there if you feel like the risk is staying high. You could spray all the way up to R3 and still get some money back on your fungicide,” he says.

“You’ve got to get some penetration through the canopy [for white mold],” he adds. “All the activity is done in that lower canopy. Anything you can do to get the fungicide as deep into that canopy as you can, that’s what we want.”

Unlike SDS, white mold is fairly easy to pinpoint definitively in the field. At this point in the season, Mueller says to look for individual dead plants “here and there” in the field.

“Then just peel back the canopy, and look for the white powder, it’s called mycelia, the fungal growth. You know that’s a telltale sign that you have white mold,” he says.

Mueller’s complete conversation on AgriTalk is available here:

Your next read: ‘Overly Tight Tassel Wrap’ Is Affecting Pollination In Corn

Tight Tassel Wrap Is Affecting Pollination In Corn Across 4 States

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 22:19:34 GMT

Pollination is always a critical point in corn development, and this year is no different. One development hiccup some agronomists and farmers are finding now is what Ken Ferrie describes as an overly tight tassel wrap that is impacting pollination in specific genetics.

“It’s a situation where the tassels on some of these varieties, based on the growing conditions, were wrapped too tight. The pollen couldn’t get out of the wrap, which led to a poor start of the pollination cycle,” explains Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

The problem went unnoticed by most corn growers until this week. Ferrie says farmers have been calling him the past couple of days and nights, as they’ve checked crops for pollination and found poor results.

“There’s kind of a panic when they find out they got moderate to poor pollination on some of their best genetics out there,” Ferrie said on Tuesday during a discussion on AgriTalk with host Chip Flory.

Unfortunately, there is no management practice or product that can correct poor pollination.

“The only thing we can do now, other than adjust our marketing strategies, is to think through whether we’re going to double-spray fungicide or not on a crop that’s been dinged,” Ferrie says.

Environmental Factors At Play

Fields that showed rapid growth syndrome with scattered yellow plants in early June should be watched carefully, advises Matt Duesterhaus, Crop-Tech Consulting research agronomist.

“We believe the conditions that resulted in the rapid growth in May and into June also played a role in this wrapped tassel issue at pollination,” he says.

“What we’re finding is silks that emerge a week before any pollen makes it down,” Duesterhaus adds. “As the silks continue to grow longer, the ones on the underneath side get shielded, resulting in patches of unpollinated kernels at the base or along one side of the ear.”

In Illinois, the affected hybrids Ferrie has evaluated were planted during a brief window of about April 14 through April 17 and then encountered some environmental stress – such as too much heat – during the onset of early, rapid growth.

“It’s some of our big-hitter hybrids that are affected,” Ferrie says, noting he has seen the problem in 200- and 300-acre fields in central Illinois where farmers likely planted a single hybrid.

However, in many cases, those same genetics planted the week after April 17 seem to have gone through the pollination process just fine.

“Also, if the farmer had a split planter, and the hybrids synced up in silking, farmers were able to mitigate some of the risk, because the one hybrid pollinated the other one for you,” he says.

(X, formerly Twitter)

Farmers In Multiple States Affected

Ferrie says he is getting reports from farmers across Illinois, plus from some in Missouri and Iowa, who are finding the issue in their fields.

“It is a wider-based problem than just in McLean County, Ill., right now,” he says.

Iowa State University Field Agronomist Meghan Anderson says she has encountered the problem on a limited basis in Iowa and from one farmer in Indiana. Most of the corn in her area, central Iowa, is currently on the back end of R1 (silking).

“My impression is the affected hybrids are still producing pollen, which will hopefully shake loose and be able to pollinate the plants,” she says. “My expectation is that it will not have a big effect on corn pollination here. I can’t say that with certainty, but that’s my expectation based on knowing how corn pollinates.”

Steps Farmers Can Take Now

Ferrie is advising growers to be proactive in checking their corn for pollination, so they can decide how they want to invest in their crop during the second half of the season.

“We’re telling guys to pick 10 ears in a row and do that randomly throughout the field. Then strip the ears down, lay them on your tailgate, and try to estimate how many kernels didn’t make it,” he says.

“For simple math, let’s say that once you get done doing your numbers that roughly 20% of the kernels didn’t make it. In that scenario, you probably gave up 15% of the yield.”

In affected fields, Ferrie says he has seen potential yield losses that he anticipates will range from 15% to 40% at harvest.

“Some of these are going to bite as far as what the yield is at the end of the season,” he says.

Grain traders and agronomists are discussing pollination stress in eastern Illinois...

Over the past 14 days, Livingston & Iroquois counties in IL, two of the largest #corn producing counties in the US, have received only 43% and 48% of nrml rainfall.#oatt #agwx #AgWeather pic.twitter.com/OG3Mfaup89
— CropProphet (@CropProphet) July 15, 2025

The important step, he encourages, is for farmers to get out and check their fields for pollination so they can plan decisions for fungicide applications and whether they need to make any marketing adjustments.

“This is a tough break for some of our guys out here, but scouting can help them decide what to do next,” he adds.

Ferrie provides additional details on this issue and how to evaluate your hybrids for pollination success in his discussion with Chip Flory on AgriTalk. This is an excellent, informative discussion you don’t want to miss. Give it a listen here:

Your next read: David Hula Shares Risk Management Strategy to Address Corn Pollination Challenges

July Weather Outlook: Goodbye Rain, Hello Heat

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 20:10:21 GMT

The Pacific Jet Stream has been going strong since early spring, sending heavy rains down through the Ohio River Valley, delaying farmers’ planting efforts there, then more recently, moving large amounts of moisture into the central Corn Belt.

“Nobody would have thought three months ago that we were going to have this much rain occurring across key crop areas, especially in the southern half of the Plains and in the Delta and Tennessee River Basin,” says Drew Lerner, president and senior agricultural meteorologist of World Weather.

But be advised, the engine driving that jet stream is about to turn off, says John Hoomenuk of EmpireWeather.com . He anticipates that by early July, some farmers will see those heavy rain events turn into a trickle.

Weather outlook for early July.

(BAM Weather)

Weather Brewing For July

“As we get into the second week of July or so, we’ll see the ridge push a little further north, and we’ll see some drier forecasts starting to appear, starting in Kansas and Nebraska, and then spreading a little bit into southwestern and central Iowa at times as well,” Hoomenuk says.

“That’s really caught our attention, because we just haven’t seen that [pattern] so far this year, and it’s a pretty big change compared to where we’ve been,” he adds.

As July goes on and August nears, Hoomenuk says the weather data indicate the jet stream will go up into Canada and drop into the Great Lakes.

If that occurs, he says farmers in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio are likely to get some precipitation dropping on the east side of the ridge. But across the Central Plains, Kansas, Nebraska, Dakotas, and maybe even into parts of Iowa, farmers will see their conditions trend a little drier.

“I think that’s not a huge concern just yet, but it’s a pretty big change up compared to where we’ve been the last couple of weeks,” Hoomenuk told AgriTalk host, Chip Flory, on Tuesday.

Drought Risks Remain In Place

The outlook for drier weather in July is not a surprise, based on the patterns some meteorologists saw shaping up last winter.

“The central United States is at about a 60% drought risk. Some of the best weather forecast models we have out there are trying to put the epicenter of that drought somewhere between Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and southern Minnesota by the time we get into July and August,” says Eric Snodgrass, principal atmospheric scientist for Nutrien.

Much of the western U.S. has been enduring dry, hot conditions already this year. Much of the central Midwest is about to experience the same.

(The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

“When you think about those particular states, developing drought from spring to summer in any year is somewhere in the neighborhood of 28% to 38%,” he says. “Essentially, the risk is doubled this year.”

Snodgrass explains the canary in the coal mine for a drought will come from a combination of the Gulf of Alaska ocean temperatures and the Bermuda high, which is an area of high pressure that can influence weather patterns and tropical systems. If the Gulf of Alaska ocean temperatures begin dropping this summer, that’s a sign moisture will be lacking.

The silver lining, Hoomenuk says, is many farmers have either had excess or sufficient moisture this spring, so no alarm bells have been ringing yet for corn and soybean crops that are now in rapid growth.

His concern is the current weather patterns will stagnate, causing temperatures to rise.

“Most of the long-range data we’re seeing, if you look at July as a whole, is showing some pretty substantial [temperature] numbers in the Central Plains. We’re talking somewhere between four and five degrees above normal in some areas of Kansas and Nebraska, two or three degrees above normal for the month on average, surrounding that in parts of southwestern Iowa and the Dakotas,” he says.

As for states further east, such as Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, Hoomenuk says farmers there will likely see temperatures “closer to normal” for July, based on data he’s reviewed.

“The thing I keep seeing is temperatures looking to be about normal, maybe slightly warmer than normal – just a couple days of heat followed by a cool down and some rain, which is is pretty ideal,” he says. “It doesn’t seem like we’ll get into that long-term heat there in those eastern regions of the U.S, so the concern level out there is pretty low right now heading into July.”

Your next read: Crop Quality in the Midwest: Most States Soar, Some Flounder

Crop Quality in the Midwest: Most States Soar, Some Flounder

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 17:41:30 GMT

If you want a quick update on how Midwest corn and soybeans are faring this season, check out the farmdoc 1-minute weekly report , which highlights USDA-NASS data. For the week ending June 22, the report indicates above-average conditions for most of the corn and soybean crops across the region.

Corn Overview
Iowa corn quality leads the nation currently, with 83% of the state’s crop rated good to excellent. Corn quality in Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin also showed positive moves.

States including Indiana and North Dakota saw a drop in corn quality. Indiana lost four points, dropping to 64% rated good to excellent. North Dakota fell nine points, dropping to 55% of the state’s crop rated good to excellent. Michigan’s corn crop is at 57% good to excellent.

Compared to five-year averages, Illinois corn is 16 points above average, Missouri is up 13 percentage points and Minnesota quality is up 12 points.

(USDA)

Soybeans Overview
According to the report, Iowa leads the Midwest with 77% of the state’s soybeans rated good to excellent, closely followed by Minnesota at 76%. Kansas improved by four points this past week to reach 65% of soybeans rated good to excellent. Minnesota was up 2% and Wisconsin moved up 1% in quality.

States that saw soybean quality drop included Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska. North Dakota took the largest hit in soybean quality, dropping six percentage points to 57% of the state’s soybeans rated good to excellent. Ohio’s soybean crop is also at 57% good to excellent.

For the five-year averages, notable results included Michigan soybeans, which are up 9 percentage points. Nebraska and Ohio also saw increases in their five-year averages.

States that are seeing a double-digit loss of quality so far, per their five-year averages, are Minnesota (-13) and Missouri (-12).

(USDA)

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Unexpected Impact From Illinois Dust Storm Hits Corn, Soybeans

Wed, 28 May 2025 17:44:08 GMT

It was bad enough Illinois farmers affected by the May 16 dust storm saw priceless topsoil blow off their fields and into the hinterlands. Adding insult to injury, many corn and soybean growers now face not only damaged or destroyed crops but will need to reapply fertilizer and herbicide products in some scenarios, says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

“If you ever tried to imagine what the Dust Bowl was like in the 1930s all you had to do was be in central Illinois that Friday afternoon,” Ferrie says. “You didn’t need your imagination to experience the Dust Bowl, you got to live it. Now, granted, it was only a few hours long. But it blew soil, it blew residue, it blew trees over, did property damage in some areas, and some of our most precious, McLean County soil was deposited in Lake Michigan.”

On Friday, May 16, 2025, an NOAA satellite captured images of a dust storm that pushed across northern Illinois, northern Indiana and the metropolitan area of Chicago. The dust storm was driven by strong winds, gusting over 60 mph at times.

(NOAA)

Not only McLean County topsoil went north to Chicago and beyond. Ferrie is concerned recent surface-applied herbicides and nitrogen were likely blown away with the soil and residue, too.

“Some of these fields that were sprayed that did not receive a rain to move it into the soil and get it activated are at risk now,” he explains. “We’ll need to keep an eye on these fields for weed escapes and the loss of nitrogen. We can make some estimates on the nitrogen losses with nitrate testing, but herbicide losses will only show up in weed escapes.”

Additional Consequences From The Storm
Ferrie, who is based just south of Bloomington, Ill., reports the dust storm generated a number of farmer requests, calls asking him to come inspect fields for crop damage. He notes that affected cornfields looked like they received a hard frost. With soybeans, some fields had plants sheared off at the ground level.

“In most cases with corn, I saw mainly cosmetic damage, and the corn will bounce back,” Ferrie says. “But in cases where the corn was covered up by dust, the crop will not come back, and it’ll need to be replanted. This occurred mainly where grass strips worked like a snow fence and the dirt piled up on the corn. In some areas buried in residue, we may need to burn that off the field before we can replant.”

Farmers who want to apply fertilizer or herbicides will benefit from holding off making any spray applications until affected crops show signs of a robust recovery, primarily in the form of new growth, he adds.

“Growth out of the whorl tells you that things are getting back on track,” Ferrie says. “We e do want to apply [herbicides] based on weed height, but this would be one time where I would put a pause on it and let this corn recover before we come back in with our post applications.”

Third Consecutive Year Of Spring Dust Storms In Illinois
Rains totaling 1” to 3” in the days following the storm, helped replenish soil moisture levels and start the recovery process in some affected corn and soybean crops.

But Ferrie points out that the dust storm marked the third year in a row such an event has swept through parts of Illinois, and the storms have cast a bad light on production agriculture in the region.

“Guys, we need to step back and take a minute to evaluate what we just witnessed,” Ferrie says. “Our soil went a quarter mile in the air, blew all the way to Chicago, closing roads and causing accidents.”

Such risks and consequences from dust storms are garnering more critical attention from the general public and scientists.

A 10-year study done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and published by the American Meteorological Society in 2023, found a total of 232 deaths occurred from windblown dust events between 2007 through 2017.

“We found that dust events caused life losses comparable to events like hurricanes and wildfires in some years,” says Daniel Tong, research scientist at NOAA and an associate professor of Atmospheric Oceanic and Earth Sciences at George Mason University, in a news release. “Greater awareness could reduce crashes and possibly save lives.”

Haboobs, another term for intense dust storms, can occur anywhere in the U.S., but are most common in the Southwest , according to the National Weather Service. El Paso, Texas, has seen 10 in 2025 alone, reports Inside Climate News .

El Paso, Texas, has been hit by 10 dust storms so far this year.

(Tom Gill)

Two other recent examples of severe dust storms include:

March 3 – a crash involving 11 vehicles on Interstate 10 occurred near Albuquerque, N.M., left three people dead. Authorities there say heavy dust storms contributed to the crash by severely limiting visibility.

March 14 – Kansas Highway Patrol officials reported eight fatality victims from an Interstate 71-vehicle pileup that occurred during a dust storm.

Fortunately, no fatalities were reported as a result of the Illinois dust storm that occurred May 16.

Calls For Action To Reduce Dust Storm Numbers
A number of individuals and organizations in Illinois are calling for agronomic practices that will prevent or limit such events in the future. One of those is Robert Hirschfeld, Director of Water Policy at Prairie Rivers Network, an independent, state affiliate of the National Wildlife Federation

“These are man-made ecological disasters, driven by a form of agriculture that exploits and depletes the land, leaving millions of acres of soil exposed and eroding for half the year,” Hirschfeld said in a statement distributed three days after the Illinois storm. “We can’t keep farming this way.”

Hirschfeld wants the issue to be addressed formally via legislative action: “If we want real change, we have to move beyond voluntary conservation and start requiring practices that keep soil in place and pollution out of our water.”

Steps Farmers Can Take
While no one can control the weather, farmers can adjust their management practices to reduce the risk of dust storms, according to Illinois Extension. A logical first step is to reduce the number of tillage passes, especially in fields adjacent to busy highways, to begin moving toward conservation tillage.

Additionally, increased soil productivity can be achieved through reduced erosion, enhanced water infiltration, and decreased water evaporation during dry periods, according to the USDA Managing Crop Residues in Corn and Soybeans research report.

Ferrie says many of the farmers he works with are “great stewards of their land and are able to keep their soils in place.”

He advocates using a systems approach in production agriculture that will protect vulnerable soils and other resources (see A System for Every Soil) .

“There are many tools in the toolbox we can use to accomplish this,” he says. “We can work together to implement practices that will eliminate [dust storms] from happening in the future.”

Check out Ferrie’s latest Boots In The Field podcast to hear his specific recommendations and additional insights.

Ferrie: Elevate Your Corn Planting Game Instantly With 7 Proven Tips

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 14:16:04 GMT

Soil conditions, temperatures and weather outlook are finally aligned this week in much of Illinois and other parts of the Midwest. “Let the big dogs run, and keep the planters running until you’re finished,” says Ken Ferrie.

In the process of planting, he offers corn growers this reminder: to get a 250-bushel corn yield average at harvest, you have to start with a 300-bushel picket-fence stand.

Here are seven recommendations Ferrie offers that can help you grow what could be the biggest corn crop of your career:

1. Plant early-maturing corn hybrids first and end with your full-season hybrids.

This will mitigate the risk of having all your corn pollinating at the same time, says Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

“If you do it the other way around, all your corn is going to pollinate in the same week, and then it’s all going to be ready to harvest at the same time, which puts a time crunch into your harvest,” he explains. “So, let’s stretch out the risk by mitigating it, planting our shorter season hybrids first, our full-season hybrids last.”

Going with that approach will also make it easier on the rest of your farming crew when it comes to scouting, spraying and harvesting the crop this season.

2. Consider your planter closing system.

Ferrie explains that your planter closing system has two things it needs to accomplish: It needs to close the furrow from the bottom up, and it needs to firm the soil over the top of that seed so that moisture doesn’t get away.

Ferrie says spike wheels struggle with the firming part in dry conditions – if that describes your situation.

“In dry conditions, go back to the solid wheels if you still have them, especially in tilled fields,” he advises. “Make sure the depth wheels stay snug against the disk opener and don’t allow dry surface soil to fall into that trench and get onto the seed before we close it.”

In tilled soils, Ferrie says you may have to increase your downforce on your depth wheels to hold a true V, which can help prevent surface soil from falling in on the seed.

“We need to be at 100% contact but we’ve got to make sure that we’re not sloughing dry soil into the trench,” he says. “You may have to go up on your margin – up on your down pressure.”

3. Do cross-sections of the furrow to see if you have sidewall smearing.

Sidewall smearing results from too much downforce, in conditions that are too wet or in soils that are a combination of wet and dry.

If the monitor tells you to lighten the downforce, lighten it until the monitor tells you you’re not maintaining the needed planting depth. Then, add downforce until you reach what the monitor says the correct depth is being maintained.

At this point, get off the tractor and do your cross-sections of the furrow, checking for any sidewall smearing.

“We don’t want to see a scene in the furrow where both sides come together. We want that furrow closing without any evidence of how that seed got there,” Ferrie says.

“If you can’t get rid of sidewall smearing without losing adequate depth, it’s too wet to plant,” Ferrie says. “Don’t only check the dry parts of the field, of course, check the wetter ones as well.”

4. Evaluate the performance of row cleaners. If you’re faced with a planting scenario where there’s dry soil on top of the field and too much moisture present at the planting depth, take care with how much of the residue you remove. Push it aside only enough that your disc openers can flow through the soil.

“Don’t plow all the dry real estate off the top with your row cleaners and then set your depth wheels in the wet soil,” Ferrie advises. “Run on top of that dry soil and plant into the soil moisture.”

5. Trust but verify what the monitors tell you. Technology can help you but don’t rely on it. You have to get off the tractor and check soils and your planting quality.

“Check a couple of times in every field to verify what the monitor tells you,” Ferrie advises.

He offers more corn planting tips during his Wednesday AgriTalk discussion with Host Chip Flory.

6. Keep a seed sample from each hybrid, if you didn’t do any seed testing ahead of planting.

Keep samples in a cool, dry place until the crop comes up. “If you get good emergence, discard the sample. If you end up with poor emergence, send the sample off to check the quality of it. This will allow you to identify if seed quality had anything to do with your poor stand,” he says.

7. Do a good job of labeling each hybrid in the monitor. Make sure you put in the correct information prior to starting every field.

“The better job you do, the easier it’ll be for everyone that comes behind you, from your sprayer operators to bug scouts, to combine operators all the way to the yield map meetings in the fall,” Ferrie says. “Everyone else will appreciate it, plus it beats writing the information down in a pocket notebook that many times ends up going through the washing machine.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a written copy of what you planted, but digital records can be shared so much faster and easier than what you jotted down in a notebook, he adds.

Check out this week’s Boots In The Field podcast if you’re planting soybeans this week, for more great agronomic tips:

Your next read: Rain Slows Record Start to Iowa Planting Season, but Farmers Optimistic About Early Finish

Unlock Profits: 5 Essential Questions for Early Soybean Planting

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:43:17 GMT

In the rush to get early soybeans planted, here are five questions to ask yourself prior to putting seed in the ground:

1. Are you using seed treatments to protect the crop?
Early-planted soybeans often stay in the ground up to 25 days, which makes them more vulnerable to disease and insect pressure. Seed treatments can mitigate a lot of risk.

“Today we have fungicides and insecticides to protect those beans at planting, which we didn’t have 10 years ago,” says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, based in central Illinois.

Pest pressure is typically higher early in the growing season as soil and air temperatures warm, triggering life cycles for not only freshly planted soybean seeds, but also pathogens, insects, and nematodes that feed on newly germinated seedlings, adds Jacquie Holland, an economist with the American Soybean Association (ASA).

Holland reports that a 2024 ASA/United Soybean Board survey done with 491 growers indicates 90% of U.S. soybean acres are planted with treated seeds. Only 3% of respondents had never planted any treated soybean seeds.

Fungicides and insecticides are the most widely used seed treatments with 72% and 66%, respectively, of farmers surveyed by ASA indicating these products are applied before planting.

2. Are you a one planter operation?
That will determine whether you have the capacity or equipment to plant soybeans and corn at the same time, if soil and weather conditions permit planting both.

You want to be able to plant corn when conditions are right. Never delay corn planting.

“Once conditions are ideal, you must plant corn,” Ferrie says. “If you miss the sweet spot, you could lose a ½ bu. to 1 bu. of corn per acre for each day’s delay.”

There are various solutions to potential planting bottlenecks. For instance, you can plant soybeans, switch to corn when conditions are right and then finish soybeans whenever you can.

“That mitigates risk by spreading out soybean maturity,” Ferrie says.

Learn more about how to address labor and equipment needs at Eight Steps to Early Soybean Planting

3. Have you considered soybean variety planting order?
Ferrie recommends going with your fullest season beans first and saving shorter season beans for planting later. It sounds counterintuitive, but there are good reasons for that advice.

“Based on our observations, we must plant full-season soybeans early enough to reach at least the three-trifoliate stage before the pre-solstice nights get too short,” Ferrie says. “There’s more time to get your short-season varieties planted early because they need fewer hours of darkness to trigger flowering.”

If early planted soybeans don’t get big enough to start flowering before the solstice, they will produce tall plants and that’s not necessarily a positive.

“The plants will continue to grow, adding vegetative stages until they reach R5 because flowering will be delayed until the nights get long enough after the solstice to trigger the reproductive stage. Tall plants don’t correlate with a yield increase. In two decades of studies, we have seen shoulder-high soybean plants lodge more often and yield less than waist-high plants,” Ferrie says.

4. Is your weed-control program in order?
“With early planting, the time frame for applying burndown, preplant and pre-emergence soybean herbicides is likely to coincide with corn planting,” says Ferrie.

“If your custom applicator is applying preplant and pre-emergence herbicides on corn, he might not want to stop, clean out a sprayer and apply soybean herbicides. I’ve seen soybean planting delayed three weeks while growers waited for a burndown herbicide application,” he adds.

Along with that, you also might need to consider a different option, such as using a pre-emergence soil-applied herbicide with residual control, Ferrie says, as a for instance.

“Follow that with a post-emergence application, applied a little earlier than you are used to. You might need to include a residual herbicide in the post-emergence treatment.”

5. Are you prepared to give soybeans a helping hand?
As soybeans try to emerge they may need some help if the surface crust is hard, meaning you might need to run a rotary hoe. If your hoe has been sitting in a shed forever, now’s the time to get it ready.

“We always say ‘hoe before you know,’” Ferrie says. “When you know you’re already in trouble with the crust, that’s when it’s usually getting too late to get the full benefit out of a rotary hoe. With these prices, you need to play every card you’ve got to add yield,” he says.

The same “hoe before you know” principle applies equally well to corn crops. You can learn more about the process from Ferrie’s video on YouTube Hoe Before You Know

Is The Planting Light Red, Green Or Yellow?

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 18:30:36 GMT

When the race to plant crops gets underway in your area this spring, take care to not stumble at the starting gate, advises Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

One way to start strong is to evaluate weather and soil conditions to determine whether they’re signaling you have a red, green or yellow light for field work and planting.

“We don’t let the calendar, the coffee shop or neighbors dictate when we go to the field,” Ferrie says. “We do our own investigating and check all soil types, especially those in the lower topography parts of the field.”

Here are four considerations as you prepare for #planting2025:

1. Do The Ribbon Test
Jumping the gun with spring tillage and planting is costly. Ferrie points out that 80% of the compaction service calls he goes on each year can trace their roots back to the first pass the farmer made in the spring.

“Compaction put in by a field cultivator is a bad gift that keeps on giving all year long. You can’t take this gift back and get a redo,” he says.

Before you take off with spring tillage or plant, he advises checking conditions just under your tillage depth. It’s a practice that he calls making a soil ribbon.

Here are three simple steps to make a Soil Ribbon:

a. If you usually run a tillage tool 4” deep, take a shovel and dig down under that to about 5” deep.

b. Collect some soil in your hand and attempt to ball it up. If the soil is wet, it will readily ball up.

c. Once you get the soil balled up, squeeze it between your thumb and forefinger to see if you can make a ribbon about 1½” long.

“If you can make a ribbon, your tillage will not only put in a density change, but it will also put in a compaction layer. That’s a red light,” Ferrie says. “If you decide to move forward with tillage and planting, you probably will need to adjust your yield expectations later in the season as well as your marketing plan.”

Ferrie adds he has known growers who spent a lot of money and time the previous fall with deep tillage that got wiped out by one bad tillage pass the following spring. Don’t be that farmer this season.

2. Know the germ quality of your soybean and corn seed.

That can help you determine planting order or whether you need to check in with your seed supplier about making a product switch, notes Missy Bauer, Farm Journal Field Agronomist, based in south-central Michigan, near Coldwater.

Bauer says farmers are finding soybean seed is a mixed bag quality-wise this season, because of dry weather conditions that hammered much of the Midwest in 2024.

“Some of the seed that was harvested for soybeans last fall was under pretty dry conditions, 8%, 9% moisture, things like that,” she reports. “So, the seed quality this year has just been real up and down. We’ve had beans that are just awesome seed quality. And then we get another batch that comes in that’s got issues.”

For growers who might not have tested their soybean seed, she would say see what the cold germ scores are, because of the variation in quality.

“If you’re going to plant early, you want to know it can handle germinating in cold conditions, so we really encourage guys get seed tested,” she says.

With seed corn, if you have seed that tests on the lower end of saturated cold score ranges, Ferrie says to plant that seed once conditions will enable the crop to emerge in five to six days.

“You guys putting starter in-furrow, keep in mind that severe pericarp damage scores tend to lead to more starter burn issues,” he adds. “When it comes to corn stands, many issues are solved when we plant corn based on soil conditions and not the calendar. This could be your highest-yielding corn crop of your career. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot before we start.”

Here are some additional thoughts on how to Test Your Seed Before Planting To Avoid Quality Issues

3. Avoid Corn Seed Chilling

To avoid seed chilling, Ferrie advises farmers to plant corn only under two conditions. First, check to see that the soil temperature is 50 degrees F or higher, and second, you want a promising weather forecast in the days following planting.

“One of the challenges of planting in soils that are 45° or lower is seed chilling,” Ferrie says. “When the corn seed imbibes moisture, the temperature of the water it takes in has an effect on the seed itself. Water under 50° means that when swelling takes place the cells aren’t as elastic and they tear, which can cause disoriented mesocotyl, no sprouting, etc. It might not kill the plant completely but effects could show up in ear count.”

Corn requires approximately 120 accumulated growing degree days (GDDs) to emerge, under ideal conditions. To calculate GDDs, you can use this equation: GDD = (Daily Maximum Air Temperature + Daily Minimum Temperature)/2 – 50.

He says the first 48 hours after planting corn are most critical. Seed that is subject to cold during that period of time is most vulnerable to chilling. When that occurs, the metabolic reactions necessary for emergence don’t take place in a timely manner.

“Cold seed corn is unable to swell in the ground with the same elasticity as it’s able to achieve with soil temperatures at 50° F or warmer,” Ferrie explains.

When corn emergence isn’t timely, yield potential is docked and you won’t get it back.

“Chilling can eliminate between 10% and 20% of your yield potential,” says Ferrie “You’ll never see that loss driving down the road, but you will if you stretch a tape measure for ear counts.”

4. Plant Soybeans Ahead Of Corn
If your weather conditions and soil temperatures turn unfavorable for corn, consider whether you can plant soybeans.
If the ground is fit, Ferrie would give farmers a green light to plant their full-season soybeans. Ferrie says Group 4s, mid-Group 3 and late-Group 3 soybeans need about 950 growing degree days (GDDs) pre-solstice. Early to mid-Group 3 soybeans need about 810 GDDs.

“We try to get those fuller season beans planted here by April 18,” he says. “With those earlier Group 3s and later Group 2s, maybe shoot for the planting timeframe of April 25 to May 4.”

For more insights on picking the right maturity for your soybean planting window, Ferrie recommends checking out the information from Crop-Tech Consulting Agronomist Matt Duesterhaus. You can find his recommendations here .

Your next read: 300-Bu. Corn Has a Big Appetite for N, P and K

Goodbye, La Niña? Eric Snodgrass Dissects What the Shift Means for Weather This Spring and Summer

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 21:12:49 GMT

La Niña is weakening, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) expects neutral conditions to develop in the next month . But even with La Niña fading, meteorologists are still concerned about drought this spring and summer.

NOAA this week said forecasters expect ENSO-neutral conditions to develop in the next month and persist through the Northern Hemisphere’s summer. According to NOAA, La Niña’s signature is cooler-than-average surface water in the east-central tropical Pacific, stronger-than-average trade winds, and drier conditions over the central Pacific.

ENSO-neutral means conditions could be close to average, but Eric Snodgrass, Nutrien’s principal atmospheric scientist, says that doesn’t mean the weather will be normal this spring and summer.

“I do expect changes,” Snodgrass says. “Think about it like this: The previous winter was an El Niño winter, and it was very mild and very wet. So, we got into spring ’24 with tons of moisture. I mean, Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota flooded out. Then we had this incredibly dry fall as the La Niña began, and it reached a peak twice. It actually hit a peak in December, and then a secondary peak about a month later at the end of January. It’s been fading ever since. The big question is, as we go into neutral conditions for this upcoming growing season, is it going to be one that paints a picture of precipitation extremes? Did it leave us with any sort of kind of problems from winter that are carrying over?”

Snodgrass says the severe weather outbreaks on Friday, that brought high winds, dust storms and wildfire warnings across the Plains, is a reminder how dry it is in the Southwest.

“We’ve got major pockets of the country that are still dealing with some pretty big drought conditions. It is fading, and that is a signal we have to pay attention to,” Snodgrass says.

USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey is also concerned about what impact the shifting pattern will have on farmers this spring. But it’s not just the dryness. It’s also the fact areas are getting inundated with rains that could pose problems.

“With this stormy weather pattern in place, that is going to create some difficulty for spring field work in some areas. It looks like the primary storm track may be through parts of the middle of the country extending into the lower Midwest and eventually the interior northeast. That is one area where we already have fairly wet conditions,” Rippey says.

How sea surface temperatures in the Niño-3.4 region of the tropical Pacific changed over the course of all La Niña events since 1950 (gray lines) and 2024-25 (black line). This shows the traditional calculation for Niño-3.4, the monthly temperature compared to the most recent 30-year average (1991–2020 for the 2024 line). By this measure, the La Niña threshold was crossed in December 2024, but La Niña remains weak.

(NOAA)

La Niñas and El Niños Are Strongest in the Winter
Snodgrass points out La Niñas and El Niños are always strongest in Northern Hemisphere’s winter, which means they fade in spring and summer.

While La Niña-like conditions were a trademark in late fall, we didn’t reach the official definition of La Niña until January.

“The atmosphere way back in November was already treating our winter timeframe like a La Niña,” Snodgrass says. So, we were getting the influences of it as it comes in and goes out. And now the question is, what’s it going to do?”

February 2025 sea surface temperature compared to the 1985-1993 average. The surface of the east-central tropical Pacific is slightly below average temperature, but much of the global ocean remains warmer than average.

(NOAA )

“This is a great map to look at,” Snodgrass says, referencing the map above. “If you focus right in the middle, you see the large area of the cooler colors. Our line is now shifting to the central and West Pacific and behind it over by South America. All of the warmer water is beginning to emerge. And that’s what’s killing it because there’s a trade wind across that area from the east to the west. We’re going to watch this fade carefully during the spring. But the question is: Do we get winter’s leftovers?”

What Fueled the Dryness This Winter?
During the winter, Snodgrass points out there was no subtropical jet. That’s what fueled drought in the Southwest and Northwest.

“I’m actually kind of worried about the beginning of April having another shot at cold air after what we’ve been experiencing in March, which has been so very, very mild. Then you say, well, we’ve had so much dry air in place. Are we still worried about more dry air coming back? To be honest, these big storm systems coming through the central U.S., if we could get four, maybe five more of those by early April, we’re going to hate it. It’s nasty weather. It’s not fun, and it’s dangerous, but it returns moisture. That could be part of the mix of things, including the fading of La Niña that could help bring us away from these major early season drought risk scenarios.”

55% of corn production, 46% of soybean production, 33% of the cotton growing area and 27% of the winter wheat production are currently experiencing drought.

(U.S. Drought Monitor )

Growing Drought Concerns
What if it doesn’t? What if we don’t see more of this severe weather hit the Southwest and Plains, and moisture remains absent as we get into the height of spring? Well, the area will enter into the height of the growing season dry and reduce their chances of seeing moisture this summer.

“That’s a box we check every spring,” Snodgrass says. “If the drought monitor saw a reduction in drought over winter, then that gives us a different look for spring. But what we see here is two-thirds of the country in some stage of drought, including the abnormally dry category. But it’s the epicenters of drought that are so concerning. Look at the Western Corn Belt. Look at the Southwest. We just wonder if that funnels into the Mississippi Valley as we go forward.”

At the same time some areas are seeing drought, Kentucky, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and the boot heel of Missouri are all experiencing heavy rains and flooding.

“By May 11, I want to know what the drought monitor map looks like. If it looks no different, then I’m going to be sounding alarms going into summer with concerns this will start to creep and move because as soon as we get into the summer weather, all we get is convective storms pop off. And what do they do? They just locally deliver rain - not big broad swaths of it,” Snodgrass says.

Tale of Two Weather Scenarios
He says the forecast leading up to May 11 is a tale of two weather patterns, with the Mississippi River being the dividing line for moisture.

“If you are along it and east of it, I think we’re going to have tight windows to plant. You could include a little bit more of Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota in that as well,” Snodgrass says. “I think we’re going to see repeated storm systems. The best moisture is east. It keeps avoiding that southern plains area.”

What to Watch: Where the Storm Chasers End Up
Snodgrass says if storm chasers are busying chasing severe weather across the Ohio Valley, the mid-south and the southeast, but not in Kansas and the Plains, that’s a key indicator there’s a problem with the moisture getting back into the plains.

“If it’s not there by the time we start June, it’s very difficult to rely on the atmosphere to return it once you get into the summer months if you live in the central plains, which is where they could build from,” he adds.

To watch the complete discussion with Snodgrass, visit Farm Journal TV and take advantage of the free trial.

Your Next Read:
Ag Meterologists Worry More Drought Lies Ahead For Spring

A Warming Trend Is On The Way For Early March

Wed, 26 Feb 2025 19:52:22 GMT

If early March weather rolls out the way some ag industry experts are predicting, farmers might be tempted to break out their shorts and sunscreen.

“It’s going to be warm, very warm for most of March,” Shawn Hackett, president of Hackett Financial Services said on the latest Moving Iron podcast, with Host Casey Seymore.

Above average temperatures for much of the U.S. are in the forecast for March 2-6, 2025.

(NOAA)

What’s at play currently, Hackett said, is a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event that could take temperatures a notch higher than usual during the next few weeks.

Hackett said the polar stratosphere is in the middle stages of developing what he called “one of the top five strongest sudden stratospheric warming events” he’s ever seen going into early March.

“The stratosphere, which normally is super cold, gets displaced and you get this extreme warming above the North Pole. When that happens, then the entire stratosphere gets unstable and starts to lose its cohesiveness,” explained Hackett, whose interest in the weather is fueled by what it can mean to grain markets.

His hope, in fact, is that the weather in early March could be a positive catalyst for grain markets. “It could offer a tremendous cash selling opportunity not only for the old crop but maybe even for the new crop that’s coming along,” Hackett said.

Maybe A Short-Lived Weather Pattern?
But don’t expect higher temperatures to persist beyond the next few weeks. There will likely be colder conditions coming in right behind them by late March to early April, according to Ag Meteorologist Drew Lerner, founder and owner of World Weather, Inc.

Lerner told AgriTalk Host Chip Flory earlier this week he believes two things will come out of the current weather pattern and then go through spring.

First, Lerner believes the moisture availability in the upper Midwest and parts of the western Corn Belt will continue to be lighter than normal, which will encourage farmers to plant.

Second, he believes the risk of late-season frost and freeze across corn and soybean country will be much higher in 2025 than it has been in recent past years.

“We may see a period like right now, where we warm up nicely, and crops will take advantage of that and really get going aggressively. Then, we could turn around and bring a cold wave in and knock those crops down,” Lerner told Flory. “That’s one of my biggest concerns for spring, besides the dryness we already mentioned in the western Corn Belt.

Conditions in the West, Southwest and portions of the Midwest are going to continue to be dry, as March gets underway.

(Eric Snodgrass, U.S. Meterologist)

“I do think, though, with that aside, we will see aggressive planting this spring in the western and central parts of the Midwest, because I don’t think we’re going to have so much moisture around that we can’t be that way,” Lerner added.

Beware Of Frost And Freeze
Hackett’s prediction for April weather coincides with Lerner’s concerns. Going back to his prediction for a sudden stratospheric warming in early March, Hackett said that what often follows an SSW about 45 days later is a cooling off trend.

“You have the potential for some very cold, wintry type of weather that can easily bring in a hard freeze. That should create a considerable amount of unfavorable planting season, either delayed planting or planting that gets done and gets frozen over and replanting winter wheat that gets frost as it comes out of dormancy,” Hackett said.

Ken Ferrie recalls farmers in western Illinois were planting early soybeans by March 21 in 2024. He encouraged farmers who want to plant early to exercise some caution.

“An important consideration is whether you have crop insurance,” said Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

For farmers in the Eastern Corn Belt, Lerner said he doesn’t believe they will be able to plant as quickly as their western brethren because of excess moisture the region has received through the Ohio Valley and is likely to continue to get this spring.

Expect Temperatures To ‘Bounce Around’
As for temperatures, Lerner believes they will average close to normal but will bounce around this spring. “So we’ll be warm, and then we’ll get cold, and we’ll go back into warm again,” he said.

Flory asked Lerner whether he would put some odds on the potential for drought conditions this summer.

“I’d say that we probably have a 25% to 30% chance that we could have a more serious dryness problem in the West. But I am being conservative with that, possibly. I really want to see what happens over these next three to four weeks,” Lerner said.

“There’s no meteorologist out there that I know of that’s ever predicted a bad drought in the summer this far in advance, and I’m not going to be the first one,” Lerner added. “I’ll leave that up for somebody else.”

You can hear Lerner’s conversation with Chip Flory here:

'Stay Tuned, We'll Be Right Back With Your Forecast'

Fri, 31 Jan 2025 22:14:43 GMT

What if you could know the timing of significant weather events for your area during the next six months with 91% accuracy?

Now you can, according to Gary Lezak, a former meteorologist with KSHB-TV in Kansas City turned weather entrepreneur.

Lezak’s business, Weather 20/20, provides weather-based data analytics on a global basis to its customers, who range from farmers to retailers to general consumers.

Eighty Years In The Making
Lezak learned in the mid-1980s that a weather cycle exists, an insight he attributes to Jerome Namais, who first addressed the concept in the 1940s. Namais, a renowned American meteorologist, was Chief of the United States Weather Bureau’s Extended Forecast Section in Washington, D.C. from 1941 to 1971.

“What it’s all about is the weather pattern above us – the river of air that goes across North America through the westerly belt, across to Europe, Asia, and then back around across the Pacific. That jet stream flow, that river of air above us, has an order to it,” Lezak told Andrew McCrea, host of the Farming The Countryside podcast, during a recent conversation.

For the next 20 years Lezak continued to study the weather cycling concept, refining what he learned as he went along.

By the early 2000s, Lezak was blogging about what he had learned, eventually calling the concept he developed the Lezak Recurring Cycle (LRC). He founded Weather 20/20 in 2008.

“The LRC is all about the cycle,” Lezak says. “After many years of practicing it, 20 to 30 years of using it, we are able to predict when and where and a little bit of the what,” with regard to weather, he told McCrea.

The core tenet of the LRC is that a unique weather pattern establishes itself every year. It starts to set up in early October, with develpment continuing through early January. By then, Lezak says the pattern can be identified and predictions of every day’s weather around the world can be produced.

Based on the LRC, Lezak says he can predict with a 91% accuracy level when and where there will be major weather events – from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts – for the next seven to eight months in the U.S.

“That (timing) is the sweet spot of the LRC and fits agriculture perfectly,” Lezak says.

He adds that Mother Nature still creates weather disruptions he can’t predict 9% of the time, based on influences such as El Nino, La Nina and the Arctic Oscillation.

Lezak’s take on the accuracy of weather forecasts differs from what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports, though an apples-to-apples comparison is not available.

The NOAA says a seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of the time. However, a 10-day—or longer—forecast is only right about half the time.

Agriculture Takes Notice
As Lezak was honing the development of the LRC in the early 2000s, fellow meteorologist, Dean Wysocki, then based in Nebraska, learned of it and reached out to Lezak for more details.

Wysocki started using the information he learned during his broadcasts, noting that Nebraska farmers were hungry for more accurate weather insights and predictions.

“I’ll tell you what, it’s a game changer. That’s the easiest way to put it,” says Wysocki, who joined Lezak on the podcast.

Wysocki, now based in Fargo, N.D., got LRC certified and began telling farmers in the Dakotas and Minnesota about its benefits.

“It’s a major piece of long-term weather forecasting, and the accuracy on it has just been amazing,” Wysocki says. “We’ve signed up between about 50 to 100 in our ag community and we’ve got nothing but positive feedback. Is it 100% correct? No, nothing is, but it’s a great tool to have on your tool belt.”

The Weather Outlook Ahead
During the conversation with McCrea, Lezak and Wysocki shared some of their weather predictions for late winter and early spring 2025, based on information the LRC has provided. Here are three of their predictions:

1. Lezak says a La Nina, which is the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, has a grip currently on parts of the western and upper Corn Belt areas, but he expects that to ease up.

“That grip that it has tends to shift precipitation patterns to the eastern Corn Belt. That’s not good for Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota,” Lezak says. “It shifts precipitation patterns to the East, but that grip we think is going to be let loose by March.”

2. Wysocki says he foresees a wetter spring, in March and April, for most of the Dakotas.

“We’ll get our moisture that we need in March and more than likely into the first part of April, and that should be good for planting season,” he says. “I’m still concerned about the western Dakotas into areas of Montana and Wyoming, worried that they’ll remain dry.”

3. With regard to drought, Lezak encourages farmers to keep an eye on the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, as he says droughts are constantly either shrinking or expanding.

“It appears that over the last year or so that areas of drought, as we look at the entire nation, have begun to decrease,” he says. “This one has been shrinking for weeks, and that is a good sign. The likelihood of that trend continuing is high.”

Wysocki and Lezak offered additional weather insights during their conversation with McCrea. You can hear more of those specifics on the podcast, available here:

Your next read: With More Arctic Air Set to Blast the U.S., Why This Winter Could Be Remembered for Its Extremes

2025 Weather: Drought and Root Zone Maps Signal Dryness Ahead

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:17:31 GMT

As 2024 comes to an end, roughly 70% of the nation is experiencing some level of drought and dryness.

Recent precipitation led to small improvements in parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas northeast to the Central Appalachians. Since its peak in September, the drought affecting the Central Appalachians and Upper Ohio Valley has steadily improved.

In the northeast, near to above-normal precipitation in the past 30 days means drought conditions have improved.

Across the Southeast, Lower Mississippi Valley and Texas, precipitation deficits continue to increase.

December is typically a drier time of year for the Upper Midwest and Northern to Central Great Plains.

Since the beginning of October, precipitation has generally averaged below normal across the Central Rockies, Great Basin, Southwest and southern California.

Northwest California and much of the Pacific Northwest have experienced wetter-than-normal conditions.

When it comes to severe or extreme drought, parts of the Northern Plains, the Southwest and the Tennessee Valley fall in those categories. Portions of the Midwest are now considered D1/moderate drought, and one-fifth of Indiana is in D2/severe drought.

Looking at various crop production areas, the following are currently affected by drought:

Barley, 35%
Corn, 54%
Cotton, 18%
Durum wheat, 70%
Peanut, 29%
Rice, 15%
Sorghum, 31%
Soybean, 47%
Spring wheat, 33%
Sugarbeet, 48%
Sunflower, 78%
Winter wheat, 27%

While the drought monitor looks longer term, NASA’s root zone soil moisture map shows just how dry it is in the top 3’ of soil across the Corn Belt and Southwest.

The Dec. 23, 2024, root zone soil moisture map shows just how dry it is in the top 3’ of soil across parts of the Corn Belt and Southwest.

(NASA)

Eric Snodgrass, principal atmospheric scientist at Conduit Ag, says the current La Nina is weak and fading, but it continues to influence weather patterns, which is sending warning signs for spring.

Snodgrass says we’re missing one important component in the atmosphere — the subtropical jet stream, which comes from Hawaii.

“We have the polar jet in place that will drive really cold air into the New Year, especially into the eastern two-thirds of the country, really cold air for probably a while,” Snodgrass says. “Until we crank the jet stream out of the Southwest, it’s hard to return a lot of moisture and break the fear of drought spreading from Mexico or from the western High Plains, which I think is where it’s going to come from next year.”

Snodgrass is worried about drought for two reasons:

Drought conditions are developing in Mexico, the western Plains, the High Plains and all the way up to Canada.
In six of the past 10 years with a really dry fall, the spring to follow was also dry. That causes concern for a big chunk of the Plains and into the Midwest.

Snodgrass says the best opportunity for a pattern shift would be if La Nina breaks down in the next few weeks and transitions to a more neutral pattern heading into spring.

Eric Snodgrass is on the agenda for Top Producer Summit in February. Register today!

Your Next Read: Ag Tech and Machinery Trends to Track for 2025

Ferrie: Four Sure Ways To Make NH3 Applications More Effective

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:04:34 GMT

A lot of farmers are crossing the harvest finish line for 2024 and preparing for fall tillage and anhydrous ammonia (NH3) applications, says Ken Ferrie, Farm Journal Field Agronomist.

While soil moisture levels have improved in some parts of Illinois and other states, soil temperatures are still too high in most areas.

“Maximum soil temperatures are still north of 70 degrees in many places, and part of our 4R program is to wait for those soil temperatures to get below 50 degrees before applying anhydrous with a nitrogen stabilizer,” he says. “Based on the 10-day forecast in central Illinois, it looks like November 7 will be close (to a good start date for applications).”

There are two huge potential negatives to applying anhydrous ammonia prematurely:

· Anhydrous will “gas off” in dry soil and is then lost for next year’s crop, costing you a lot of money, time and effort you can’t recoup.

· Anhydrous applied in warm soil can create an environmental problem for everyone, farmers and the general public alike.

Ferrie offers four reminders to help you make sure the product stays put once applied, so it’s available for corn next spring.

1. Soil temperature has to be right to keep product in the ground. Make sure it is no more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit – and trending downward – before making anhydrous ammonia applications this fall for the next year’s corn crop.

2. Make sure you have soil moisture available. Soil moisture is needed to temporarily hold the ammonia in place, so it can become attached to clay or organic matter in the soil, according to Iowa State University Extension.

If dry soils are cloddy and do not seal properly, the ammonia can be lost at injection, or it can seep through the large pores between clods after application.

3. If the local soil temperature is cooperating but soils are dry, Ferrie offers some ‘tricks’ that can help decrease volatility if you don’t have adequate moisture.

“One trick to lessen the volatility is to decrease the rate of ammonia you’re putting on. Lower rates need less water,” he explains. “But you’ll have to adjust the spring applications to square this rate back up.”

Another possibility is to go deeper to expose the ammonia to, potentially, more soil and more water.

“I know you retailers are cringing when I say that because, as I’ve been talking to some of you, this has been a bad year on shanks as a lot of guys are using the toolbars as subsoilers,” he notes.

4. Check behind the application rig for a good seal. Ferrie is usually most concerned about not having adequate moisture to seal applications. However, where too much moisture is present, he says the knives will smear in the soil.

“If you’re too wet to seal, the bars will be gassing off right there at application, right behind the machine,” Ferrie says. “Just because you don’t see smoke, don’t assume it’s sealing.”

He says to have someone walk behind the machine to sniff for ammonia leaks.

“My suggestion is once the toolbar goes by, someone needs to jump down on their knees and sniff the trench. If your trench sniffer is gagging for air, you’re not sealing it,” he says.

Ferrie adds that if you are doing tillage or applying anhydrous where seagulls typically drop behind the tool to scoop up worms brought to the surface – but they’re leaving and not coming back – that’s another tip the soil is leaking ammonia.

“When I get the call that a grower can still smell anhydrous in a field a day after application and wondering how much is lost, I know of no calculator or computer model that can predict that,” he says.

“You only have nitrate testing next spring to help us predict the loss. In those situations, it may be a good year to separate your strip-till from your anhydrous application,” he adds. “If you can’t get it to seal so you can get your stripping done, we can always sidedress the anhydrous next spring.”

You can listen to Ferrie’s complete instructions on his weekly Boots In The Field podcast below:

Your next read on AgWeb:
Unlock Profits from Agricultural Lime to Transform Your Soil pH
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EPA Announces Final Rule for Application Exclusion Zone

Hope For Drought-Stricken Land? Your Winter Weather Outlook

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 19:57:17 GMT

What is it you remember from last year’s winter? Maybe it was when the wind chill in Kansas City brought temperatures down to -30°F and Patrick Mahomes’ helmet shattered in the middle of a playoff game. A more accurate representation of the season, though, is probably Wisconsin’s snowmobile industry dubbing the season a “lost winter” from the lack of snowfall.

Regardless of how we remember it, last year’s winter was incredibly mild, with temperatures well above normal and snowfall almost nonexistent. But according to Eric Snodgrass, senior science fellow at Nutrien Ag Solutions, the consensus is that the months ahead are going to look a lot different.

“We didn’t really have a winter last year,” Snodgrass says. “This year, we have a better chance of a storm track coming through the “I” states and out through the Ohio Valley toward the northeast. So, the forecast is a little wetter there with periods of colder air. It doesn’t mean it will get cold, stay cold and not stop snowing, but it’s certainly going to be different than a year ago.”

That’s because this winter brings about a 75% chance for La Niña to develop, which is when the trade winds across the equatorial Pacific are strong. With La Niña in the forecast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting wet conditions in the north and dry, warm weather in the south.

The 2024-2025 U.S. Winter Outlook map for temperature shows the greatest chances for cooler-than-average conditions in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.

(NOAA)

USDA meteorologist Brad Rippey says La Niña can also bring chances for extreme cold events.

“Not every La Niña is like this, but I will say two prime examples were in 1989 and 2021 — that latter outbreak was when Texas pretty much lost power,” Rippey says.

Drought Dangers
With dry conditions in the forecast, Snodgrass says the big story this winter will be whether or not there will be enough moisture to work against the drought that has been building.

“The best winters for agriculture are the ones we hate and remember as being terrible — we get good, hard freezes and plenty of moisture comes in,” Snodgrass says. “If we don’t see that, we get into a situation where we become very dependent on spring rains and may have a conversation about 2025 drought risk.”

The 2024-2025 U.S. Winter Outlook map for precipitation shows wetter-than-average conditions are most likely across the Great Lakes region of the U.S.. Drier-than-average conditions are forecast for parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast.

(NOAA)

Snodgrass explains drought is often a multiseason effect, and Rippey says this one has been building since June.

“There’s been a four-fold increase in drought to now affecting about 50% of the country,” Rippey says. “That was great for summer crops, dry down and harvesting, but now the problem is what will happen with winter wheat, cover crops, pastures and range land.”

While much of the north will have the opportunity for relief from this growing drought, that likely won’t be the case in the south.

“We are expecting a generally warmer- and drier-than-normal winter across the entire southern tier of the United States, reaching all the way from Southern California to the middle and southern Atlantic coast. That does include important winter wheat production areas into the Southern Great Plains,” Rippey says. “There’s not much reserve right now in terms of soil moisture, and this could amplify already existing dry conditions.”

That brings concern for river transportation as the bump in water levels that came from Hurricanes Milton and Helene has worked its way through the system now.

“Historically, those levels tend to bottom out around January at the latest,” Rippey says. “We’re probably talking about a few more months of low water issues, and then you start to turn a corner around February because plants don’t use as much water during the winter.”

Timing Will Be Everything
Because winter is technically the country’s dry season, it won’t be easy to break drought in the months ahead. For the wet forecast in the north to make a difference, Rippey says it will all come down to timing.

“It’s important to start getting moisture before it gets too cold,” Rippey explains. “When you go into a cool season like this with limited soil moisture, if the cold air comes in too quickly, you freeze the soils before you get moisture, which can limit the absorption of rain and snow into those soils.”

The timing of when La Niña really starts to take effect will be important as well.

“December is going to be the month where we test if this La Niña really has what it takes to give us the things we expect,” Snodgrass says. “Normally, La Niñas peak around Christmas, and then they start to fade. If we miss that opportunity, we will watch all of the sub-seasonal things and hope they can deliver good winter weather to knock out the risk of drought going into 2025.”

But even with a few “drought risk” boxes being checked, it’s still too soon to speculate or worry about what next year’s growing season will look like.

“2022 had major fall drought, and then what happened? It rained in July, didn’t get terribly hot, and we had a decent crop. Indiana had one of its best crops ever in 2023, even though it was so dry in spring,” Snodgrass says. “We have to remember that the crop has many ways by which to stay alive and do well, and we’ve engineered that seed to be better performing even when there is some stress. We can’t make big, broad assumptions that 2025 is going to be a year of substantial drought risk that destroys yield.”

‘Moisture Opportunity’ Is On Its Way To The Plains

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 20:42:26 GMT

September was one of the driest months on record for parts of the Midwest, and October has continued the dry trend, said Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk, on Tuesday’s show. He asked guest John Homenuk of Empire Weather Consulting, what shut the moisture off in the middle of the country.

“We’ve had this ridge in place since September, which we’re fortunate didn’t happen in late July and August,” Homenuk told Flory. “We’ve kind of been in this really poor cycle for moisture for several weeks.”

Homenuk said parts of the U.S. have been in a fairly weak La Nina weather pattern, which he expects will “oscillate up and down a bit” throughout this fall and into the 2024-25 winter months.

However, Homenuk does anticipate some limited moisture will start to move back into Midwest weather forecasts soon.

“For instance, late this weekend and early next week, we have a moisture opportunity coming into the Plains,” he said. “A low-pressure system could spread out of the Intermountain West into the foothills, and eventually bring some moisture to places like the Texas Panhandle, Kansas and Nebraska. That’ll be the first system to come out, and there might even be some scattered showers across parts of the Midwest early next week.”

Meteorologists anticipate weather patterns will continue to lean toward more moisture as November gets underway.

“It’ll be a slow go of it, but the feeling is that we’re through the worst of the dryness now, and we’ll start working back gradually into a more normal pattern,” Homenuk said.

Looking Ahead To Next Spring

Flory asked what kind of weather pattern farmers can anticipate going into the 2025 cropping season.

“There is some indication already on models that we’re going to split up again, between a La Nina and El Nino,” Homenuk said. “Some of the indications stay near neutral, so not a La Nina or El Nino, and some of them start actually sending us back into El Nino by spring and summer of next year. I think we need to get through the next couple of months before we really have an inclination of where it’s going to go next year.”

Flory said he’s concerned, given the weather conditions this fall, that next spring will be a dry one.

“It’s kind of common to hear people say, ‘droughts don’t start in the year that they happen. They start in the fall before.’ And I think there’s more than a few producers out there that are concerned that this drought we’ve got in the middle of the country is going to continue on into the spring of next year,” Flory explained.

Homenuk said he believes if the U.S. transitions back to an El Nino weather pattern by spring, that should be generally viewed as a good thing.

“That would reintroduce some more moisture. If we stay neutral, or we stay in a weak La Nina into the spring, then I think those lingering drought concerns could make their way into the growing season in 2025,” he added.

Weather Outlook For South America

Flory asked what kind weather South America, Brazil and Argentina in particular, will see for its growing season.

“We’re kind of into this weak La Nina scenario,” Homenuk said. “What tends to happen down there in South America is you get a little bit of a mixed bag. So, it was a slow start over the last couple of weeks, but now we’re seeing a pattern change across central Brazil, essentially Mato Grosso southward, where there’s moisture coming into the forecast over the next several weeks.”

He added that the same could likely be said for northern Argentina.

“If you look at the next 15 to 30 days, the moisture forecast is actually pretty solid. They have some ground to make up, given how dry it was before. But I think these weak La Ninas tend to be OK in those regions. It is a kind of pattern indicating that there will be some moisture around it. I think they’ve avoided the worst-case scenario, which would have been a really strong La Nina developing.”

Hear the complete conversation between Homenuk and Flory here:

How Pro Farmer's 2024 Yield Estimates Compare to USDA Expectations

Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:39:45 GMT

For four days this past week, more than 100 crop scouts sampled 2,000 to 3,000 fields in seven Midwest states as part of the one-of-a-kind Pro Farmer Crop Tour . Building on the boots-on-the-ground data and observations, Pro Farmer considers crop maturity and historical differences in Crop Tour data versus USDA’s final yields to release its national production estimates.

“One of the major questions heading into Crop Tour was whether the corn and soybean crops could live up to the lofty expectations,” says Brian Grete, editor for Pro Farmer. “Of the two crops, I was more impressed with soybeans than corn, and the corn crop is stellar.”

Here are the 2024 Pro Farmer National Production Estimates.

Corn Yield Estimates

“The first two days of the tour all we did was move bushels from South Dakota and Nebraska to Ohio and Indiana compared with USDA estimates,” says Chip Flory, host of “AgriTalk.” “We had laid the groundwork for a really good crop in Iowa, but in northwest Iowa, we ran into problems, which we anticipated after too much rain during the planting season. In our final day running the routes, we’ve got a nice crop in Iowa, but Minnesota is another story.”

On the eastern side of the Corn Belt, Grete and fellow scouts found a strong corn crop.

“USDA put a record yield on corn for five of the seven states,” he says. “Ohio isn’t one of those — but if we weren’t talking about last year’s record crop in Ohio, this year would be up there. This year is comparing to last year’s gold standard.”

Indiana: Trouble spots are few and far between. The corn crop posted higher numbers across the board for ear count, grain length and the number of kernels around the cob compared to the 2023 crop.

Illinois: While scouts saw variability in Illinois, the high-yielding fields far exceeded those that fell short, and the state is holding a big crop . Plant health looks good, and even the lower leaves are still green.

Iowa: Yield potential looks promising , especially in the southeast corner, the garden spot, of the state. The corn in east-central Iowa looks good, but the variability is more noticeable in the northeast.

Minnesota: The corn crop in Minnesota doesn’t look too good from the road, and it seems to have ran out of gas . Record rainfall during planting hurt the crop out of the gate, causing drowned out spots and yellow corn, followed by a dry summer.

Nebraska: Despite hail damage and fewer ears, the Nebraska corn crop looks promising with better numbers for grain length and kernels around the cob compared with 2023. Some dryland corn looks as good as irrigated acres thanks to cooperative weather.

Ohio: Despite drought conditions this year (59% of Ohio is currently seeing some level of dryness), the corn crop is proving to be resilient .

South Dakota: Historic flooding that occurred right after Father’s Day in the southeast part of the state left its mark. Scouts found fields with fewer ears , but grain length was up compared with 2023. It’s obvious the corn crop had two very different planting dates, so there’s two very different crops growing in the state.

Soybean Yield Estimates

“Soybeans could be spectacular as long as there isn’t a weather event that derails the crop ahead of harvest,” Grete says. “Typically, there’s some concern with either the corn crop, soybean crop or both coming out of Crop Tour. There aren’t concerns this year.”

Indiana: If soybeans can get a rain or two, yields should finish strong .

Illinois: Uniformity, heavily podded plants and good soil moisture — Illinois has all the ingredients for a big yield , which is a pleasant surprise. “For beans that don’t look that impressive, they certainly have a lot of pods on them,” says crop scout Mark Bernard.

Iowa: Soybean fields are consisten t and show minimal pest and weed pressure across the state, boasting big pod increases versus last year.

Minnesota: Soybeans seem to have handled the excess water better than the corn crop, but yield will be lucky to top 50 bu. per acre .

Nebraska: More pods and pods with three and four beans are good signs.

Ohio: The pod factory is still working. Plants are heavily podded and recent rains pumped moisture into the pods. The drought seems to have had little impact on yield potential.

South Dakota: Soybeans are inconsistent and could go either way this year. The crop is still filling out and has a ton of work to do to realize its potential, Flory says. If it doesn’t get it done, then it’s probably not going to be last year’s bean crop.

Tyne Morgan, host of “ U.S. Farm Report ,” sits down with Chip Flory and Brian Grete to recap the highlights and lowlights from the 32nd Pro Farmer Crop Tour.

Your Next Read — Take Our Poll: How Are Your Yields Shaping Up This Year?