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Pilot Grove, Missouri | I'm in the rolling hills of Cooper County in central MO. I'm a tiny operator but have both creek bottom fields and some hilltops with very variable soils including multiple patches of red clay in a some of my fields and a few rocky patches in all of them. My soils limit my upper end compared to my neighbors but my creek bottom fields sometimes give me an advantage in dry years like this year. The creek bottoms also limit my upper end in wetter years that but I've installed some more drain tile in the last few years to hopefully improve that. Tile has certainly cured spots that were too wet to get equipment across when the rest of the field was ready to go. The hilltops can suffer more in dry years but in wetter years they have produced all my bean, DC bean and wheat records. I don't plant corn on my hilltops (at least not yet) as I feel it'd take a very wet year to make it pay.
Leaving out extreme drought years (2012 Corn = 42 bu/ac) and my own farm records for individual fields I still have fairly wide variability. Corn range is about 100-170. Beans are about 35-55, DC beans 0-35. SRW is about 40-70. My individual field records are corn 178, beans 68, DC beans 42, wheat 85. | |
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How much variation do you see in yield year to year?
