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cropsey, il 61731 | We are right in the western ford and eastern mclean county (IL) area and hoping manure, fungicides, higher population, regular church attendance, selling my sport bike and being a volunteer fire fighter give us a little edge on yields (I complemented the wife a few times as well for good measure).
Some of the things of note in our area are substationally drowned out spots in fields. The rains actually drowned out corn standing 3-4' tall in spots and this is just observation from the road - who knows how far back it goes. The rain was also very spotty - 2" at our house turned into 5" 5 miles east of us. Almost everyone has areas of stunted corn (small ears at best) where water sat a little too long and there was lots of early firing from the ground to the ear just after pollination. However, the firing may be more of a new 'feature' of recent hybrids - last year hybrids exhibiting the same behavior did quite well.
I have also noticed corn and corn acres had reduced stands this spring and don't look much better now. Ground that couldn't get worked last year presented a real challenge - spring tillage made moon rocks and there just wasn't the right weather to mellow them out. There isn't a lot of strip till corn on corn around here, but it may have worked better if the strip creation process didn't make clods as well.
Most of what has been harvested is likely early corn or at least early dieing corn. Larger operators remember 09 very well and planted quite early, probably earlier hybrids and are harvesting as soon as they can (1/2 price elevator drying got some going this past week). However, harvesting is not really started yet and we'll see if the later hybrids were helped by the late rains or not. The yields I've heard from the first few guys are 140 to 160bpa.
Thanks,
Pat | |
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Yield reports from around the country........................
