The Good...The Bad....and The
UGLY
Don’t all farmers name their
corn crop every year?
Yes this just happened and Rog
named his fields for 2015....The Good...the Bad...and The Ugly. It's the
name of one of his favorite western movies that he feels like he is living out
for sure this year.
We have had an overabundance of
rainfall that has caused our corn, and even our bean fields, to look well...not
so good. The pictures below happen to be some of the "good"
fields. However, these pictures were taken on June 29 after all of the
rainfall in June. We had well over 8.56 inches (normal: 4.76 inch for the
month of June) according to usclimatedata.com. Unfortunately, we have
gotten a lot more rain in July which has made the “bad” look even worse.
The Good.......
I asked our Agronomist Kyle
Brooks at Harvest Land Coop about yield loss at this time and why our corn was
yellow. I knew why it was yellow but me explaining that...well, let’s
just let Kyle do the talking since he is the expert!
"It's hard to say what the
yield loss to this point is but especially with the rain today (June 26) we
could start seeing significant losses. The yellow corn can be caused by many
things. I really believe at this point we are looking at slowed root growth
caused by anaerobic conditions within the root zone. This decreased root growth
then causes nutrient deficiencies, not because the nutrients are not there but
we don't have the infrastructure to take the nutrients up. However, with
nitrogen’s mobility in the soil, this rain has no doubt potentially caused some
problems depending on the program.
The Bad....
Sadly, the "bad" have only gotten worse. We are very thankful
that we only have about two hundred acres like this and not our entire crop.
Some farmers in Northern Indiana don't have anything in the fields now but
standing water. If you ask Rog how long he has been farming he will tell
you since he was 4…when his Dad put him on a 8N Ford Tractor. (He also started driving a self propelled Oliver combine at 9 but that's a story worth telling some other time.) This year is one
for the record books and in his opinion one of the worst due to the impact over
the entire state and not just in certain pockets.
Now for the UGLY.....
We hope you have enjoyed DRW
Farms episode of "The Good...the Bad and the Ugly Corn Crop 2015."
As the Plot of the movie
states...The Good, The Bad and The Ugly must all battle it out to get their
hands on $200,000 worth of gold. Mother Nature is our battle this year for
sure!
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