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John's World on US Farm Report.. "Summer Fallow is outdated?!?"
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JonSCKs
Posted 11/18/2018 04:09 (#7112055 - in reply to #7111783)
Subject: "My IQ is directly related to my precipitation.."


I like PK's handle.. "My IQ is directly related to my precipitation."

( https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_032018.pdf )

Here..  We average about 28" which means we get anywhere from 11" like 2011 to over 40".. We're NOTHING like Western Kansas.. (Or Eastern Colorado.. or the PNW area..) as we usually get something.. but golly I sure know how to cry when we miss it.

In the late 1990's stories of guys walking away from Farms in NW Kansas.. "it just doesn't rain out there.."  Literally Walking away from leases.. "here.. you can have it.."  on 1,000's of acres.

They do not get much precipitation but given the altitude, cool nights, and pretty good soils.. they have been busting incredible dryland corn yields recently.. 140+ on summer fallowed and even continuous..  Just some amazing stories.

We can have too much heat down here.. In 2011.. my dryland corn crop averaged 1 bushel.. and that basically came from an area.. about the size of 4 football fields out in the middle of my best field..  I was 30,000 bu short of filling $4 Contracted corn and the market was over $6.. so I went out and threshed every mudhole I could find.. THE BEST that I saw that year was the monitor hit 30 bushels for about the length of a power pole.. and that was it..  Most of the dryland corn fell over before filling an ear.. when the crop adjuster came to look at one field.. nothing was standing taller than my knee.. it was 10 am.. mid 90's and we had the A/C on..  he said.. "No need to get out of the car on this one.. we'll call that 0.0 bushels on the yield."  Even the Pigweeds died that year..

The Irrigated went from 60 to 145.. the neighbor caught a rain and hit 200.. the other neighbor had 240 the year before and did 60 on about 24" of pumped water..  He opened up a field.. then turned it over to the hired man.. as he couldn't take it running the machine.  "I'm going to town.. here.. you run it."

.. we had almost 50 days over 100.. 12 over 105 and like 5 over 110 with 11" of precip.. and we were LUCKY to even get that.

to my west.. it was worse as many did not harvest a crop.

This year.. I harvested almost 3 times the dryland corn acres we had in 2011... It averaged over 100.. with the best pushing 180 next to the pivots.. a fair amount of it was corn on corn.. just the way the rotation worked.. we broke out some CRP and needed to hit some new to us rented ground with more atrazine..  A good crop in a wet year.. to my east they chopped alot of their dryland corn as they missed out on the summer monsoons.

Our best irrigated corn.. 30 acres did 282.. we averaged.. 206.. if it wasn't for all the drown out.. my neighbor had a field do 289.. the monitor mostly ran in the 230'ish + area.. minus the mudholes.. which were BIG this year.. and Zero's will bring down an average pretty quick.. what didn't drown out.. was pretty darn good.

It was our Biggest Corn crop ever.

.. and I suspect that we will now enter the dryer part of the cycle.

My father cut his teeth on this farm on his own starting out in the 1950's.. the 1950's were three droughts interrupted by 2 floods.. you either got 15" for the year.. or you got 15" in six weeks.. and it had to last you the next 16 months until the next round... and they did it without chemicals.. which means you had to farm it.  but not too much.. as some of it blew out.

John Phipps would not have survived that.. as a farmer.

Yet our seed prices and chemical costs are set by people who work and live in the Cornbelt..  You can not afford to use chemicals this year and make $$$.  If it wasn't for the Sonny $$$.. my neighbors 25 bu (looked like 40) dicamba soybeans would be upside down.  A Pre burn down... a pass of dicamba.. a pass for insects.. and the combine.  25 bu x $7.25 - $50 an acre seed - $50 an acre for the chemicals

$4 per bushel for the seed and chemicals.. never mind the taxes.. depreciation.. hired work.. etc.

This program will not work going forward at this cost/return structure.



Edited by JonSCKs 11/18/2018 04:26
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