By Brian Hefty

Early projections for 2013 say there could be planting intentions of 100 million acres of corn in the U.S.!  What does that mean for you and me?

In terms of commodity prices, let’s just hope that high demand continues over the next few years to eat up all the corn we could potentially produce next year.  Now let’s get to the real issue… if you’re going to raise more corn on your farm, how can you do it?

  1. Goss’s Wilt.  Make sure you pick corn varieties that have great Goss’s Wilt tolerance because there’s nothing you can do to stop Goss’s Wilt after it gets started.  If you are raising continuous corn, you have the most risk for this disease that has now spread all the way north into North Dakota and northern Minnesota.  Even if you are in first-year corn, if your area raises a lot of corn you probably have a good chance of seeing Goss’s Wilt.  Picking the wrong variety could cost you 50 bushels or more this coming year if Goss’s Wilt shows up on your farm.
  2. Corn Rootworms.  Resistance to single-trait rootworm corn hybrids continues to spread quickly.  You may think insecticide is expensive, but at $6 corn it only takes a 2.5 bushel loss to pay for a full rate of a planting-time insecticide like Force, Aztec, or Counter.  The full rate of Capture LFR costs even less.  Even if you don’t see rootworm damage or see corn lodged on your farm, the hidden yield loss could easily be 10 to 20 bushels per acre.  By the time you actually see damage (e.g. lodging), you’ve most likely lost 30 to 50 bushels per acre.  Our best 3 step plan to stop resistant rootworms is to…
    1. Plant SmartStax corn because it contains 2 different Bt traits rather than just 1
    2. Use a full rate of an insecticide like Force, Aztec, etc.
    3. Spray adult rootworm beetles as soon as you see them with Capture (or generic bifenthrin).  This usually occurs around tasseling time.
  3. Nitrogen.  Continuous corn requires more nitrogen than corn following soybeans, usually by 50 to 75 pounds per acre.  The reason why is high carbon corn residue requires extra nitrogen in order for bacteria to decompose it.  Eventually, you’ll get that nitrogen back, but certainly not in year one.  If you don’t make the commitment to apply lots of extra nitrogen in continuous corn, don’t even plant corn.  Plant another crop.
  4. Grain Handling.  This year, it was easy on most farms because corn yields are down and the grain was dry.  What I always encourage farmers to do before the start of the season is run the simple math on your worst-case scenario… lots of bushels (that’s not bad, it just takes a lot of storage capacity) with lots of moisture.  Let’s say you have a fall where all your corn is 25% moisture, and your wet yields are coming off at 240 bushels per acre.  Can you handle that?  Do you have enough combines, grain carts, trucks, augers, bins, dryers, etc.?  How much time will it take you to get all those wet bushels off and get them dried?  If you can’t handle all the bushels, especially if they’re wet, you need to plant a different crop or expand your infrastructure.  As good as corn dollars out today, you can probably afford a good dryer, more bins, and a dump pit.  On a side note here, we put in a dump pit a few years ago so a 500 bushel truck could come right from our fields and dump the entire load in the time it takes to raise up the truck box.  This allowed us to operate 1 less truck during harvest, keeping our trucks on the road rather than sitting at our bin site.  The pit cost some money and took some work to set up, but it is fantastic, and I wish we would have done it 20 years earlier.
  5. Early weed control.  With this year’s early harvest, there were far more weeds this fall than normal.  That means more weed pressure next spring.  Don’t forget that early weed competition kills yield.  Always use a pre-emerge herbicide in corn and plan to spray your post-emerge product fairly early, too.  While every farmer is looking for that next new thing that will increase yield, weeds are often still the number one yield-robber on many farms, so make sure you have great weed control, especially when the corn is small.