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| That figure has been around for more than a couple decades from when corn prices where round about $2.00 and propane prices were round about 20 cents or less. That figure is also supposed to include a factor for ear drop and now that we have hybrids that are corn borer resistant (some merely by having an ear shank several times fatter than the borer hole) the loss due to field drying is different than it was. With corn value up a factor of only 2 and propane cost up a factor of 10, and ear drop less critical, I can't see hew the same 22% that was optimum 20 or more years ago is optimum now.
Seems to me without spending a long time crunching numbers that harvesting at 16 to 17% is closer to optimum than 22% based on the much higher cost of fuel (natural gas us up even more than LP), the marginally greater value for the corn, and the better ear retention of the modern varieties.
Some numbers: The elevator I sell to charges 3.9 cents a bushel a point drying today. 20 years ago it was probably more like 0.4 cents. Today drying from 22% to 15% for immediate sale costs 27.3 cents, back then it cost 2.8 cents. Today drying cost 7.8% of the $3.50 value corn and back then 1.4% of the value of $2 corn. Today 1.4% of $3.50 corn would allow 4.9 cents for drying or enough to go down 1.25%, Which would make the optimum harvest moisture, ignoring shrink and ear drop, more like 16.25%.
Shrink would be a lot different with 22% or 16.25% corn, but 16.25% corn from the field has taken much of the actual shrink in the field. And with some numbers more than that from ear drop and with other numbers practically nothing from ear drop. Many a year in my field I've had corn harvested around 15% and in my early days I religiously patrolled the field on foot picking up unshelled ears and hand shelling. One evening of that where I picked and shelled half a bushel off of about 10 acres cured me. What looks somewhat poor on the ground isn't all that much. More modern machinery and corn with better ear retention has reduced that loss.
I do recall seeing a farmer out in a field in the Mississippi River bottoms down from Quincy pickup up just whole ears have a bushel + sized pile every 100 feet or so, but that was, I think, an usually large ear drop. That was in the late 1960s best I recall.
Gerald J. | |
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To Dry or Not to Dry?
