Temperature

As crops go into bins, growers will be looking to maintain quality until their marketing opportunities improve. Some ongoing management practices are vital to the process.

While many farmers in the state were delighted by the results the 2025 season delivered, that wasn’t the case everywhere. In some areas, Mother Nature delivered a series of agronomic problems that dominoed and turned a potential bin buster crop into one that was average at best by harvest.

It’s a head-scratcher situation: some Illinois farmers are reporting moisture levels in their corn are dropping only one point per week.

All it takes to spark a flame sometimes is a single high-temperature source in the engine area or an overheated bearing that ignites some dry plant material. Take control of the situation in advance by having a brief plan ready to implement. Communicate it to your family and employees.

The crop took it on the chin this season, with some Iowa farmers reporting huge yield losses as harvest gets underway. A one-time fungicide application helped, but it wasn’t enough to buck severe disease pressure, allowing it to return.

Agronomic specialists are encouraging farmers to make their corn harvest plans now, prioritizing which fields to combine first and so forth. Evaluating how well the crop is standing on a field by field basis can help you plan the process and minimize having to pick up down corn.

The amount of damage that can occur in crops depends largely upon these factors — how cold it gets and for how many hours, and the plants’ stage of development.

The disease is causing turmoil for farmers who have a large crop in the making. In some cases, a Hail Mary fungicide application at R4 up to early dent (R5) might make sense this season, say agronomists.

There is still up to 55% of the kernel dry weight left to be accumulated by many corn hybrids at this point — starch that can contribute significantly to grain fill and higher test weights.